  The liquid drop model, originally used to model atomic nuclei, describes the
competition between surface tension and Coulomb force. To help understand how a
ball loses stability and becomes prone to fission, we calculate the minimum
energy path of the fission process, and study the bifurcation branch
conjectured by Bohr and Wheeler. We then present the two-dimensional analogue
for comparison. Our study is conducted with the help of numerical simulations
via a phase-field approach.
