What 2 Colored Droplets Of Water Did On Camera Is Bizarrely Fascinating

Need something to stare at for a while? Look no further than these curiously behaving droplets of water and food coloring. We promise, it”s nowhere near as boring as it sounds.

While he was working on an undergraduate project, Nate Cira noticed something strange. Droplets of water dyed with food coloring were migrating across surfaces on their own, finding other droplets with matching colors to join with, and avoiding differently colored droplets. He was fascinated, but baffled.

Cira was joined in his research into the phenomenon by Manu Prakash and Adrien Benusiglio. The trio studied the process by which the dyed water seemed to dance in what looked almost like a social scene. The droplets would approach one another, make contact, or avoid each other based on the color of their dyes.

So were they alive? Did the research team discover racist water?

No. The behavior, they determined was a result of the specific components of each of the drops. Food dye is made of water and propylene glycol. The different amounts of propylene glycol gave each color unique properties and caused the droplets to exhibit different behaviors. This is known as artificial chemotaxis. (Chemotaxis is when single cells exhibit what appears to be conscious, social behavior.) An explanation of the fascinating behavior can be seen in the video below.

(via YouTube/Standord, Colossal)

If you”re interested in the more complex concepts of fluid dynamics, you can read Cira, Prakash, and Benusiglio”s study in Nature. Or, you could break out the food dye and see if you can recreate the experiments yourself. The footage you see in the video and the .gifs has been sped up, so if you”re going to try this, be patient.