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Sunday, May 24, 2020

How to walk (or run or dance) on water - the non-Newtonian pool

This commercial features a 2,100 gallon pool of the non-Newtonian fluid (wiki) mixture of cornstarch and water known as oobleck: it was filmed in Kuala Lumpur for a Malaysian bank. More information below the video, which you should watch full screen:


You can make your own oobleck using 1 cup water to 1 to 2 cups cornstarch - in my house we call this a slurry and use it to thicken sauces. Add food coloring if you want. More on oobleck at Scientific American, and this Wired article  explains:

British polymath and Enlightenment hero Isaac Newton studied lots of things: optics, gravity, waves, mathematics, astronomy, history, religion and alchemy and so on. Then in his spare time, he investigated how liquids flow and thus got a whole branch of fluid dynamics named for him. Newton observed how common liquids, such as water, flow the same regardless of how much stress you subject them to. Push a stirring stick into a cup of water and swish it around. The water’s viscosity – how smooth or sticky its consistency is – stays the same.
Pretty simple, yeah? Many liquids that we interact with on a regular basis work this way: things like water, milk, oil, or juice. But there are also a lot of common fluids that don’t. These are non-Newtonian fluids; substances whose viscosity changes based on how much pressure you apply to them.

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