Oobleck is a decidedly weird substance. Made from a dense suspension of cornstarch in water, oobleck is known for its mix of liquid-like and solid-like properties, depending on the force Keep reading
Tag: jamming
Modeling Oobleck
Oobleck – that peculiarly behaved mixture of cornstarch and water – continues to be a favorite of children and researchers both. Oobleck flows like a liquid when deformed slowly, but try Keep reading
Shearing Grains
Granular materials, like beads and sand, demonstrate both solid and fluid-like behaviors, which makes them difficult to study. Traditionally, one method for studying how fluids respond to deformation places the Keep reading
Storing Memory in Bubbles
Soft systems like this bubble raft can retain memory of how they reached their current configuration. Because the bubbles are different sizes, they cannot pack into a crystalline structure, and Keep reading
Salty Comets
Many of the products we use every day in our homes behave like solids until the right force is applied. These yield-stress fluids are like hand sanitizer – strong enough Keep reading
Giving Chocolate that Smooth Finish
Anyone who’s tried to make chocolate confections at home can tell you that achieving that perfect smooth consistency isn’t easy. It was only after Rodolphe Lindt invented the process of Keep reading
Ants Avoid Traffic Jams by Giving Up
Both ants and traffic are well-connected to fluid dynamics, even if they are not, strictly speaking, fluids. As it happens, ant traffic has interesting implications not only for human transit Keep reading
Oobleck Under Impact
Fluids like air and water are Newtonian, which means that the way they deform does not depend on how the force on them gets applied. Many other fluids, however, are Keep reading
Cornstarch Physics
Oobleck, a non-Newtonian fluid made up of water and cornstarch, is a perennial Internet favorite for its ability to dance and the fact that one can run across a pool Keep reading