Vodka-powered robots harness Cheerios-inspired physics for movement in bizarre experiment

In brief: In what is certainly one of the quirkiest science demonstrations we've seen, researchers have taken inspiration from a phenomenon observed in Cheerios to create tiny robots powered by vodka. It's just a proof of concept for now, but the team says that the robots could potentially be used for environmental cleanup or industrial processes.

The bots were developed by a team led by Jackson Wilt at Harvard University. As reported by New Scientist, they experimented with 3D-printed plastic pucks around a centimeter wide, each containing an air chamber for buoyancy and a miniature fuel tank. But instead of traditional fuel, they filled the tanks with varying concentrations of alcohol ranging from 10-50%.

When the pucks were placed in water, the alcohol gradually leaked out, setting off what's known as the Marangoni effect. This occurs when a fluid with lower surface tension rapidly spreads across a ...