Abstract
Surface tension is an important property of liquids. It has diverse uses such as testing water contamination, measuring alcohol concentration in drinks, and identifying the presence of protein in urine to detect the onset of kidney failure. Today, measurements of surface tension are done in a lab environment using costly instruments, making it hard to leverage this property in ubiquitous applications. In contrast, we show how to measure surface tension using only a smartphone. We introduce a new algorithm that uses the small waves on the liquid surface as a series of lenses that focus light and generate a characteristic pattern. We then use the phone camera to capture this pattern and measure the surface tension. Our approach is simple, accurate, and available to anyone with a smartphone. Empirical evaluations show that our mobile app can detect water contamination and measure alcohol concentration. Furthermore, it can track protein concentration in the urine, providing an initial at-home test for proteinuria, a dangerous complication that can lead to kidney failure.
Highlights
Mobile computing has recently seen a surge in research on inexpensive methods for measuring liquid properties and identifying liquid type.[7, 12, 17, 21] The developed methods can detect water contamination and distinguish a variety of liquid types such as water, milk, oil, and different alcohol concentrations
The proposed designs require a specialized setup and use devices typically unavailable to the general population (e.g., UWB radios or RFID readers). They make an important step toward ubiquitous liquid testing, they are still difficult to use by lay users
Our evaluation shows that CapCam accurately measures liquid surface tension using only a smartphone
Summary
Mobile computing has recently seen a surge in research on inexpensive methods for measuring liquid properties and identifying liquid type.[7, 12, 17, 21] The developed methods can detect water contamination and distinguish a variety of liquid types such as water, milk, oil, and different alcohol concentrations. The goal of this line of research is to enable liquid testing outside the lab environment and encourage ubiquitous applications.
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