Drizzle honey or syrup from high enough, and you’ll see it coil like a liquid rope. This feature of viscous fluids also extends to polymer-filled viscoelastic fluids. But recent work shows that the elasticity of these fluids delays the onset of coiling; put differently, if you pour two fluids of comparable viscosity, the viscoelastic one will have to fall farther before it will start coiling. The authors also found that the coiling frequency for a viscoelastic fluid is smaller than a viscous one, given the same experimental conditions. (Image credit: flo222; research credit: Y. Su et al.)
Viscoelastic Coiling
