Splash

A splash is what water does when something enters it faster than it was expecting. It is water’s way of saying that it was not consulted.^[1]

A splash consists of the water that was there, now in the air, and then, briefly, on you.

The law of conservation of splash

All water that leaves a puddle must land somewhere, and it lands on the trousers of whoever is standing nearest. Physicists have measured this distance as “exactly where you are”, with a margin of error of one shoe.^[2]

Classification

• Plip: a raindrop in a puddle.
• Plop: a pebble in a pond.
• Sploosh: a boulder in a lake (rare, and nobody owns up).
• Cannonball: a grandad in a swimming pool (common, and he owns up loudly).

In sport

In diving, a splash costs points, and the best divers train for years to enter the water without one. They spend their whole careers learning to do less of what happens naturally. In jumping into a swimming pool, by contrast, the splash is the entire point, and the two sports have never shared a pool on good terms.^[3]

See also

• Puddle – a splash waiting to happen
• Water
• Rain – lots of small splashes, all at once

References

1. Plop, P. (2008). Upwards Water. Ripple Books.
2. Drench, D. (1996). “Where It Lands”. Proceedings of Wet Trousers 4.
3. Pike, J. (2015). Less Splash. Deep End Press.