Consider a lift, which is at rest in an homogeneous gravity field. There is a thin layer(with thickness $h$) of water on the floor of the lift. At some moment a single cable, supporting the lift, breaks and the lift begins free falling(forever). It is easy to describe qualitatively what happens with water, i think: the formation of a drop begins. During this process the drop jumps up from the floor and once the total kinetic energy of the drop is dissipated into the heat, the center of the drop stands at some height $H$ from the floor. (All the kinetic energy of the drop is coming from the difference in surface tension energy of water between initial and end moments.)
Question: How to determine(approximately) $H$ ?
For simplicity let's assume that the cross-section of the lift is a disc-shaped with radius $R$. $(h<<R)$
Remark: A key point is to determine how the total kinetic energy distributes between internal kinetic energy and translational kinetic energy of the drop, i think. With this the problem will be solved.
So it is convenient at the early stage of formation of the drop ignore viscosity effects of water and air resistance.
I would like to clarify that by internal kinetic energy i mean the kinetic energy of macroscopic motion of water inside the drop. At early stage there is no energy loss assumed, for simplicity.