There are several ways to prevent those inevitable wine bottle drips from staining your tablecloth. You can wrap the bottle in a napkin while you pour, just skip the wine glass altogether and drink straight from the bottle, or use your physics degrees to re-engineer the bottle’s spout so it never drips again.

As a wine aficionado, Brandeis University biophysicist Daniel Perlman has almost certainly tried all of the above, but he’s had the most success with that last approach. Over the course of three years, through some of the most enjoyable research he’s probably ever conducted, Perlman studied the flow of liquid as it leaves the lip of a wine bottle.

Slow-motion video revealed that a stream of wine, or really any liquid poured from a bottle, has the tendency to curl back over the lip and then run down the side due to the bottle being made of glass which is hydrophilic—it attracts water-based liquids.