Non-Newtonian liquid potato starch on a speaker

Leigh Russell at Dorkbot Sydney demonstrated the behaviour of non-Newtonian liquids by putting a potato starch solution on a speaker and playing tones from his synthesizer through it, producing shoggoth-like effects. The stuff looks like its alive and trying to escape! This one is safe for the kids to try.
http://www.hereswhy.tk

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• non-newtonian
• liquid
• speaker
• science
• sound
• waves
• dorkbot
• starch
• experiment
• demonstration
• shoggoth
• lovecraft
• uncanny
• weird

[sthral]

Awesome. But I have a question. What makes it "non-newtonian"? I mean, in this case, what is the criteria to distinguish some newtonian from non-newtonian stuff?

[iwoolf2007]

@sthral Newtonian fluids have constant viscosity, in non-Newtonian fluids the viscosity can change.The potato starch fluid becomes more viscous when its shaken by the speaker moving, and clumps together, and moves differently than a Newtonian fluid like water.

[espeon1]

it's Alive!!

[iwoolf2007]

@espeon1 it was truly awesome!

[Sharpie4123]

Holy crap.. I just thought of something... what if the vibrations of life are keeping us alive just like this subwoofer O.O

[enzoross2961]

@Sharpie4123 But doesn't that mean we will die if we go into space?

[TreeBearNation]

0:59 looks likea sperm trying to get away from the noise..

[bluefishtattoos]

dat shit hovers at a point wtf!

[tsjoencinema]

@Sharpie4123 We will never know!

[WhiteValkery]

IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!

[FnjordKnot]

You should try this pumping powers of phi through the speaker.