Overview

• The peer-reviewed PNAS research used a guillotine cutter, high-speed imaging, and simple modeling to visualize and quantify droplet outbursts during onion slicing.
• Droplets are expelled at roughly 5–40 meters per second and can rise about 60 centimeters, starting with a fast mist followed by liquid threads that break into many drops.
• Sharper blades and gentler, slower strokes produced fewer droplets with lower kinetic energy, whereas blunter or faster cuts generated more numerous, more energetic sprays.
• Refrigerating onions at 1°C for 12 hours produced no significant reduction in droplet generation compared with room-temperature samples in the reported tests.
• The authors warned that ejected droplets could carry kitchen pathogens and noted tentative ideas such as oil coatings or lower-sulfur onion varieties that remain to be validated.