Is it polite to discuss the fundamental forces of the universe at the breakfast table? The Cheerios effect — which described why those little O’s clump together on the surface of milk in your bowl — brought physics to morning mealtimes when it was identified more than 10 years ago. Now, scientists are extending that conversation over breakfast with “the inverted Cheerios effect.” But for this one, you should swap your bowl of cereal for a pan full of Jell-O.

Here’s why: The Cheerios effect isn’t really about cereal, it’s about how solids come together atop liquids. The lessons you can learn from playing with your breakfast are so broad that astrophysicists have used them to better understand how gravity binds objects in space. Now, a group of European and American scientists have asked: What would happen if the roles of solids and liquids were reversed? How do liquids behave atop solids?

Some things were known: Two drops of milk on a Cheerio will just soak in. Drops of liquid on something rigid and flat, like the bottom of a bowl, stay put unless an external force moves them together. And on a soft surface that can deform itself, like Jell-O, liquid drops will attract, just like bits of cereal in milk (except over a much longer time frame).

But the scientists were surprised to find that if that soft surface is sufficiently thin, the drops will repel, according to their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their findings provide insights for materials science and bioengineering.