I was seated at a dinner table with eight or so people. To my right, at the end of the table, was a woman who was in conversation with the man facing her. The table became a magical pool of water, about six inches deep, with no sides and the tablecloth sort of floating on its surface. The fact that the water did not spill out the sides seemed to attributable to some counterintuitive yet inviolable law of physics. With some effort I remembered the name of it.

"That's the miracle of surface tension," I remarked.