Hard granular materials — sand, gravel, glass beads, and so on — can flow, but, in narrow regions or under large forces, they can also jam up, essentially turning into Keep reading
Tag: rheology
Dendritic Painting Physics
In the art of Akiko Nakayama, colors branch and split in a tree-like pattern. In studying the process, researchers found the physics intersected art, soft matter mechanics, and statistical physics. Keep reading
How Hagfish Slime Clogs
When attacked, the eel-like hagfish slimes its predator, clogging the fish’s gills so that it can escape. A recent study looks at just what makes the slime so effective. There Keep reading
Surface Fat Gives Chocolate’s Mouthfeel
Understanding the interactions of food and our mouths is incredibly difficult. There are lots of changes going on: shape changes from chewing, viscosity changes as saliva lubricates the food, and, Keep reading
Mixing the Perfect Batter
In baking, there’s a point when wet and dry ingredients get combined to form the batter (or dough) that eventually becomes a tasty treat. Experienced bakers know that the ratio Keep reading
Making Yeast-Free Pizza
Yeast is a key ingredient in many pizza doughs; as the yeast ferment sugars in the dough, they produce carbon dioxide which bubbles into the dough, creating the light and Keep reading
Hagfish Slime
The eel-like hagfish is a superpowered escape artist, thanks to its slime. When threatened, the hagfish releases long protein-rich threads that, when combined with turbulent sea water, unravel to form Keep reading
Aging Fluids
If you’ve ever left a sealed container of Playdoh untouched for months, you know that there’s a big difference between the fresh stuff and what’s left in that can. Aging Keep reading
Studying Active Polymers Using Worms
I’ve covered some odd studies in my time, but this might be the strangest: to understand how active polymers affect viscosity, researchers loaded drunk worms into a rheometer. Active polymers Keep reading
Floccing Particles
Adding particles to a viscous fluid can create unexpected complications, thanks to the interplay of fluid and solid interactions. Here we see a dilute mixture of dark spherical particles suspended Keep reading