Yui Takai, Kei Mukoyama, Pritam Kumar Roy, Guillaume Lagubeau, David Quéré, Samuel Poincloux, Timothée Mouterde
Liquid marbles, droplets coated with a granular layer, are highly mobile as particles prevent capillary adhesion to the substrate. Yet their coating creates a static rolling friction, which we measure and model. Motion requires shear within the shell so that it is governed mainly by the grain density. This density controls yielding via a logistic function emerging as the particle network approaches percolation and increasing rapidly at close packing. More broadly, our system offers a simple platform for probing granular raft mechanics and measuring their effective surface tension.