Staying on Top of Oobleck at Duke

Pool of oobleck: Duke students and profs walk, run, and jump on, as well as study, an amazing fluid.

Welcome to the Pratt School of Engineering http://www.pratt.duke.edu/ at Duke University http://www.duke.edu/ . On April 9th and 10th, 2010, students and faculty from the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering http://www.cee.duke.edu/ and the Engineering K-PhD Program http://www.k-phd.duke.edu/ had fun studying and exploring the viscoelastic properties of oobleck. The event was held within the framework of the Carolinas Conference 2010 http://www.asce.pratt.duke.edu/ .

What is oobleck? The name comes from the fictional precipitation in the Dr. Seuss book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck." Roughly a two-to-one mixture of cornstarch and water, oobleck is a strange beast: it can display the properties of either a solid or a fluid—it is a non-Newtonian fluid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_Newtonian_fluid as well as a viscoelastic material http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscoelasticity . Using our concrete mixer, we mixed about 1,300 pounds of cornstarch with water and filled an inflatable pool with the oobleck. Welcome to our demonstration.

Over short time scales oobleck displays elastic properties: if you hit it rapidly it behaves like rubber, and you can even walk on the surface--almost like walking on water .... Over long time scales, however, oobleck flows like a fluid. So if you just stand on the surface, you will sink.

Do you know any other viscoelastic materials? How about your old friend playdough?

Music:
Bitter Sweet Symphony: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony
Get Ready For This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Ready_for_This

Category:

Education

Tags:

• oobleck
• pool
• pool of oobleck
• staying on top
• fun
• oobleck fun
• fun with oobleck
• party
• oobleck party
• cornstarch
• corn starch
• non-Newtonian fluid
• non Newtonian fluid
• non-Newtonian
• Newtonian
• fluid
• viscoelastic
• visco-elastic
• elastic
• water
• solid
• walking
• running
• jumping
• walk
• run
• jump
• mechanics
• dynamics
• physics
• science
• experiment
• Duke
• Pratt
• Civil
• Environmental
• Engineering
• K-PhD
• Durham
• howto

[MrSpecialeffectsguy]

It's all fun and games until someone disappears...

[glamourstar123]

this is cool

[MrDutch2009]

its a pool of cum

[hippychik97]

@TheMasondsweat umm... its cornstarch and water.

[TheMasondsweat]

how much does it cost to do something like and where could you most likely find the materials?

[brooks5000]

okayyyy...



[firemario10]

its a PASTE >.>

[TheGavinban]

Oobleck is EPIC