ABSTRACT
The Plateau method has been called from the Belgium physicist Joseph Plateau. The method originates from an accidental event in 1840, when an assistant leaked some oil into a container filled with a mixture of water and alcohol. Plateau observed that the drops of oil shaped into perfect spheres in the mixture. The method of density matching between two immiscible phases was originally devoted to mixture of oil in fully miscible water–alcohol mixtures. Density matching has thus to be carefully and finely adjusted by varying the concentration of a component of the host liquid. In the classical Plateau method where three components are present, there is a significant change of density matching with time as alcohol either evaporates or mixes with the oil phase.
