This Is a Water Droplet Being Sliced in Half

File this under: stuff you didn’t know would be really cool but actually is. This is a picture of a water droplet being sliced in half by a superhydrophobic knife. Watch a video of that happening here.

There are other ways to separate water—stretching a drop until it divides, for instance—but these researchers were trying to split up the water without “undesired mixing effects or satellite drops.” The droplet of water is sitting on a superhydrophobic surface, pinned down by two wire loops. The knife is also superhydrophobic. When it’s lowered down onto the droplets, they split apart into two, beautiful little droplets.

Here’s the study the picture comes from. The authors write, “A water drop on a superhydrophobic surface that is pinned by wire loops can be reproducibly cut without formation of satellite droplets.”

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Rose Eveleth was a writer for Smart News and a producer/designer/ science writer/ animator based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, Story Collider, TED-Ed and OnEarth.