Liquid origami

A French team has created the first mini-origami figures that fold themselves around droplets of water.

FOLD ME. As it evaporates, a water droplet bends a plastic sheet into a 3-millimeter-wide pyramid. The same mechanism could work at microscopic sizes. C. Py and C. Baroud/ESPCI

Benoît Roman of the Institute of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris and his colleagues cut shapes out of flat plastic sheets and then dabbed them with water.