How can a jet of water be powerful enough to cut through steel?
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Have you thrown a rock at a wall before? You can do it lightly which won’t leave a mark. You can do it hard which may crack the wall. Or if you had a cannon you could launch it and break straight through.
Its the same with water. Throw it at something with enough force (pressure) and it’ll go (or cut) straight through it.
There are a few other things helping it. Water is incompressible, so it doesn’t just squeeze up like a bouncy ball when it hits something hard.
You could think of it as just transfering force to a small area. The actual power comes from whatever motor is pushing the water. The nozzle focussing all the motor’s power in to a very small area which the water transfers to the steel. We just use water because it’s a cheap, non dangerous, abundant, incompressible liquid.
Fun fact: there’s something called sand blasting where you blast sand at a surface to cut off rust/paint etc. Its a very similar process, just using lower pressure so it doesn’t cut and something more abrasive (sand) so it scrapes away the top layer.
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