New technique makes water droplets sprint

It’s been more than 8 years since researchers found a way to alter a surface so that water would crawl uphill. Now, expanding on that work, they have made individual water drops race across flat, level surfaces at a brisk clip of 3 miles per hour.

Within 0.033 seconds, drop 1 (A) speeds outward from near the hydrophobic center of a modified silicon wafer and is visible as a white streak that stretches toward the top of the disk (B).