From bouncing to floating: the Leidenfrost effect with hydrogel spheres Waitukaitis, Scott R ; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2299-3176 Harth, Kirsten Van Hecke, Martin The Leidenfrost effect occurs when a liquid or stiff sublimable solid near a hot surface creates enough vapor beneath it to lift itself up and float. In contrast, vaporizable soft solids, e.g., hydrogels, have been shown to exhibit persistent bouncing - the elastic Leidenfrost effect. By carefully lowering hydrogel spheres towards a hot surface, we discover that they are also capable of floating. The bounce-to-float transition is controlled by the approach velocity and temperature, analogously to the &quot;dynamic Leidenfrost effect.&quot; For the floating regime, we measure power-law scalings for the gap geometry, which we explain with a model that couples the vaporization rate to the spherical shape. Our results reveal that hydrogels are a promising pathway for controlling floating Leidenfrost objects through shape. American Physical Society 2018 info:eu-repo/semantics/article doc-type:article text http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_2df8fbb1 https://research-explorer.ista.ac.at/record/126 Waitukaitis SR, Harth K, Van Hecke M. From bouncing to floating: the Leidenfrost effect with hydrogel spheres. <i>Physical Review Letters</i>. 2018;121(4). doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.048001">10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.048001</a> eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.048001 info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess