Comments on Papers by Ryce et al. on The Electrostatic Dispersion of Liquids

It is noted that all drops carrying more than one unit of electronic charge (on their surface) are either metastable or unstable and that the energetically most favored mode of binary fission does not result in daughter droplets with charges exceeding the Rayleigh limit, although this limit would be closely approached by the smaller daughter droplet if this mode of fission were induced in drops of low charge relative to the Rayleigh limit. Also, it is suggested that the secondary fission observed by Ryce and Patriarche probably followed a primary fission which was highly asymmetric because of perturbations existing when the original drop was created.