Superhydrophobic' Knife Chops a Water Droplet Cleanly in Half

Odds are that you've never tried to slice through an individual drop of water before -- nor would you have any reason to -- and given the properties of water and cohesion, it would prove difficult. Unless, of course, if you were wielding this "water-hating" knife developed by engineers at Arizona State University and Youngstown State University.

The hydrophobic knife with an ability to cut cleanly through a droplet  in a "gentle fashion" could have application for separating proteins that are mixed with biological fluids and need to be analyzed for biomedical research, New Scientist states.

"Multiprotein separation is vital for the detection of important proteins that provide valuable information on gene expression and can serve as early signals of a disease state," the research states.

Watch footage of the knife cutting the water in action:

According to the research published in the journal PLoS One, the team put the water on a "superhydrophobic surface." They kept it in place with wire loops so when cut it wouldn't result in "satellite droplets," maintaining it in only two distinct droplets. The knife made from polyethylene, and others from zinc, was treated with silver nitrate and HDFT to make it superhydrophobic.

(H/T: Gizmodo)