why does water seem to not stick in the path of the windshield wipers?

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I was washing my car and noticed that every time I spray water on the windshield, the path of where the windshield wipers wipe, is like kind of dry/different than the edge parts of it.

Why does that happen?

In: Chemistry

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

This could be for a few reasons, but all of them boil down to surface of the window.

Water is very “sticky”, and especially on glass, it will form (weak) bonds with the surface of the glass and stick to it. If the glass surface has certain features to it, like any kind of non-stick molecule being at the surface, the water will instead bond with itself and form little droplets that roll off the window.

Also, as windshield wipers scrape against the glass, some of the material from the windshield wiper (or something that the wiper has accumulated on its own) can slowly grind off and accumulate on the windshield. It could be a very minor amount and extremely thin layer, but this will change the way the water interacts with the surface of the glass.

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