Shapes of a filament on the surface of a bubble

The shape assumed by a slender elastic structure is a function both of the geometry of the space in which it exists and the forces it experiences. We explore, by experiments and theoretical analysis, the morphological phase space of a filament confined to the surface of a spherical bubble. The morphology is controlled by varying bending stiffness and weight of the filament, and its length relative to the bubble radius. When the dominant considerations are the geometry of confinement and elastic energy, the filament lies along a geodesic and when gravitational energy becomes significant, a bifurcation occurs, with a part of the filament occupying a longitude and the rest along a curve approximated by a latitude. Far beyond the transition, when the filament is much longer than the diameter, it coils around the selected latitudinal region. A simple model with filament shape as a composite of two arcs captures the transition well. For better quantitative agreement with the subcritical nature of bifurcation, we study the morphology by numerical energy minimization. Our analysis of the filament’s morphological space spanned by one geometric parameter, and one parameter that compares elastic energy with body forces, may provide guidance for packing slender structures on complex surfaces.