Via WIRED:  “Lotus leaves stay dry by using the natural vibrations of their environments to shake off water, and manmade materials should be able to mimic the water-repelling technique.

New research published today in Physical Review Letters by Duke materials scientist Chuan-Hua Chen has solved a long-standing puzzle: how lotus leaves stay dry in the wild, but not in the lab.

You can watch the process at work in the video below. At first, the water molecules are subtly impaled on the tiny spikes of the lotus leaf. As the vibration commences about halfway through the video, the water droplets at first struggle to break free — and then actually do so. In the language of materials science, the leaf’s surface has gone from a Wenzel state, where it’s not hydrophobic, to a Cassie state, where it is. And that’s the very first time that’s ever been observed in the lab.”