Why do fat droplets appear in oil-water mixtures?

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Anyone who likes to eat home-style clear soup will certainly have noticed that small droplets of fat often float on the surface. If you also eat soup or ask yourself in other situations why these effects arise with oil-water mixtures, you will get a compact overview in the following article.

Your milk, too, is an emulsion of the finest droplets.

Compounds from oil-water mixtures

Oil and water are actually not miscible. If you have ever poured oil in water, you have probably noticed that both liquids can be mixed up by pouring them into each other or by simply pouring them into one another Stirring does not combine, but rather separate from each other in droplets (for example as fat droplets) or, in the case of larger quantities, even in layers form on top of each other.
However, there are processes that can lead to such mixtures. This is necessary, for example, if you want to make mayonnaise or cream. A finely divided oil-water mixture is called an emulsion. It is the combination of two normally immiscible liquids. Even if it cannot be seen with the naked eye, in this case one of the two liquids So the oil or water, tiny droplets are formed, which are in the other liquid to distribute. This usually results in cloudy liquids (milk is one of them, for example).
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So when you make an emulsion, it is not a complete and molecule-changing mixture from oil and water to a new substance, but merely to a distribution of one constituent within the Others.

Why do fat droplets appear?

The emulsions are not stable mixtures. If you leave an emulsion to stand for a long period of time, the oil and water separate again from each other, which you can recognize, for example, by the presence of fat droplets on the surface of water develop. As a result, the two components have visibly separated (something like this can happen more often with food).
The visible droplet formation comes about when the small droplets, which are initially not visible to the human eye, become larger Drops can flow together and become more and more differentiated from the other liquid and thus the emulsion into unstable mixtures do.