The first report on the use of deuterium-labelled water in analysing the splash phenomenon

Splash is a widely studied phenomenon, partly forming the phenomenon of erosion. Until now, tracing the origin of splash water was a highly error-prone, or impossible, task. We propose a method for tracking splash water by means of stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) analysis. We tested the method on a water-water model, checking the effect of drop height, water layer thickness and the effect of water evaporation. It turns out that the drop height and the thickness of the water layer have practically no effect on the origin of the water in the splash, and all the water comes from the vessel, not from the drops. The only exception is when a thin layer of water is impacted with a drop, in which case 23% of the water also comes from the drop. The proposed method could be used to study more complex systems such as water-soil.