February 17, 2026
Shock waves in a wire? Hold my beaker
Physicists Make Electrons Flow Like Water
Internet loses it as scientists turn wires into water slides
TLDR: Scientists made electrons move together like a tiny liquid, even forming shock-wave patterns, hinting at new kinds of electronics. Commenters clashed with jokes about rewriting textbooks, hype over graphene’s industry moment, frustration with hard-to-build 2D materials, and a side-quest of explainers and article mix-ups.
Electrons just went full waterslide. Physicists got tiny charges to move together like a liquid — even making a shock wave in a lab test, just like fast water crashing into slow water. That’s the big science flex. But the real splash? The comments. One joker kicked off with a classroom coup: “why change how we teach electricity when we can change electricity to fit class?” Cue chaos.
Graphene stans flooded in. A booster dropped a name and an industry tease, claiming a “process to create pristine graphene synthetically,” turning the thread into When Will Graphene Save My Gadgets. Realists fired back with a bucket of cold lab water: “2D materials are awful to work with,” but sure, the results are “stunningly beautiful.” Translation: great for headlines, nightmare for manufacturing.
Then came the plot twist: someone confused this story with a New Scientist piece about friction, and the thread forked into “wrong article, bro” versus “actually, both are cool” energy. Meanwhile, a helpful soul posted a YouTube explainer for electricity newbies, which naturally triggered the YouTube professor pile-on. Through the foam, one truth stood out: making electrons act like water could rewrite how we design future devices — if the graphene vs. reality showdown doesn’t drown it first. Read the preprint vibes here: arXiv.
Key Points
- •Recent experiments demonstrate electrons can behave like a fluid under certain conditions.
- •Cory Dean and collaborators observed an electron shock wave, analogous to fluid shock waves, indicating very high electron speeds.
- •Thomas Scaffidi characterizes hydrodynamic electron behavior as the current frontier.
- •Andrew Lucas explains conventional conduction via pinball-like scattering off lattice vibrations and impurities.
- •Hydrodynamic electron flow may enable new electronic devices and ways of understanding quantum materials.