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Right, they've been used in products that the consumer has no way of accessing without destroying said product. A paint-like application wouldn't be something I would trust to stay applied to the surface. You've seen paint rub off of objects, right? A fine powder is going to stay better than paint over time? You gonna let your baby put it in its mouth?

There have been studies dating back to 2005 or so outlining the possible dangers of these substances, yet we still don't really know all there is to know about it. I'm not so quick to trust that something like that would be safe.

But but thanks for correcting my misinterpretation about the hydrophobic thing.

I was not talking about Vantablack in my comments. I was talking about other, older hydrophobic coatings.

Also, I'm fairly sure they bond the nanotubes with something to make them stick and stay in place. Pure nanotubes are just a powder, they would not act like paint. Nanotubes are not a new discovery and have been used in consumer products already, mostly electronics, google it.

This hydrophobic stuff is great for experiments and wow factor but I am still confused at the actual application.

I know it wouldn't have come this far without application but its not like I hear...because of its hydrophobic coating...blah blah blah...pay me more money.

He's wrong though. I've seen materials more dense than water float due to a surface coating when I watched some videos on newer hydrophobic coatings years back. It's not the first time by far, they must not have even googled it before making their claim....here's just one....
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/March/17030902.asp
Pretty sure that copper and silver are both heavier/more dense than water, and they made a working 'raft' out of coper/silver mesh back in 09.

dat surface tension. so hydrophobic.

If these are polyethylene or polypropylene, they are both highly hydrophobic in their pure form and water will not wet the surface of these materials. Given their color these are obviously not from pure polyolefin streams, so could perhaps be more hydrophilic, but it's very hard to get a PE or PP substrate to totally wet out even with high loadings of traditional fillers and reinforcements. Some folks have asked why they are black... which is indeed odd and perhaps not conducive to minimizing evaporation... and I can only imagine that the source of the polymer used to make these could be a scrap stream as they would be wanting to keep costs low, and in comingled streams the ultimate color is often dark - black, deep blue, browns etc. - when the stream is extruded and pelletized. If money was no object and they had to go with balls, then black would likely be the last choice, not the first (white - well loaded with inexpensive TiO2, or in some future universe... reflective silver!) Have fun.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Using-Lasers-To-Make-Super-Hydrophobic-Surfaces

Using Lasers To Make Super-Hydrophobic Surfaces has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579.

Next we make a boat hull so hydrophobic that the water just gets the fuck out of the way, drop one over the Mariana Trench if you want to watch a boat fall 6.8 miles.

Your video, Using Lasers To Make Super-Hydrophobic Surfaces, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

@SDGundamX Excellent point and personally guilty on both subjects of discourse, as I have hit numerous brick-walls and spent way too much time in my lifetime arguing semantics with both the police (who will never change) and in the realms of religion vs atheism, an equally as banal and dead-end exercise.

Oh and newt? Fuck a thesaurus and your assumptions-I have a larger vocabulary that most volumes will hold wielded like a coach gun with a hair trigger. Fuck yours and y'alls, didactic adherence to unlikely plausibles. Logic be damned, befaced as we are with the exponential rate of changes coming down the pike. Riiiight. You live in a world whose boundaries reside in logic, intelligence, reason and order. The illusion being, you haven't a clue and none of us do.

Everything we believe true is wrong, a healthy mantra.

In the realm of civility? Civility begets the same with me, uncompromising unshakeable, late-stage, hydrophobic atheists haven't discovered what that means yet.

Adhesion. Water is polar, its why you get surface tension and I think that's why it sticks to most surfaces. Mercury adheres to itself pretty good but for different reasons. You'll notice it runs off surfaces in a similar way water runs of a hydrophobic surface - it doesn't streak because it doesn't stick.

Now, perhaps if it were an aluminium sponge...