8. Conclusion

Over the past thirty years, new ways of determining surface tension and its temperature coefficient have improved our knowledge of these quantities, thanks to the use of :

• purer materials in cleaner atmospheres;

• different variants of the levitated drop method.

As for the laid drop method, it's its "wide drop" version that has come to the fore, enabling surface tension accuracy of 1%. In all cases, γ measurements have benefited amply from advances in data acquisition and processing made possible by computer technology.

Although the surface-active effect of oxygen on the surface tension and temperature coefficient of liquid metals has long been known, it is mainly in recent decades that systematic measurements have been carried out for around ten metals...