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
Tag: rheology
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
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
How the Hagfish Deploys Its Slime
Hagfish – an eel-like species – are known for their prodigious slime production, which helps them escape predators (and, in some cases, seriously muck up highways). Part of the hagfish’s Keep reading
Even Mountains Flow
Over about 5 months of 2018, the summit of Mount Kilauea slowly collapsed as the volcano erupted. Seen in timelapse, it’s a remarkable reminder of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus’s Keep reading