The Bizarre Liquid That Sometimes Acts Like a Solid

Fun with cornstarch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw

When I was a kid and we made potato dumplings.......... potato starch was the same why. Was kinda fun......

The MYTHBUSTER episode where they run across the cornstarch mixture was hilarious...slow down and you SINK.

I understand that GLASS is supposedly actually a non-Newtonian solid too.

Couldn't swear to it, but I think the glass thing was an urban myth.

I think we touch off that about glass here on CR4, also about it being a solid or liquid.......

Silly Putty.

I had a very old house with some old glass panes. I don't know how they started out but When I repainted, I put the micrometer on a couple and they were marginally thicker at the bottom, far from enough to be conclusive.

I heard that lead is a slow liquid.

We label the slow changes in concrete, "creep".

"I put the micrometer on a couple and they were marginally thicker at the bottom, far from enough to be conclusive."

I remember a magazine article from long ago, Either Scientific American or Popular Science, where they were looking at glass supposedly being an incredibly viscus liquid. They measured the thicknesses of stained glass windows in Medieval churches, and found that about half of the panes were thicker at the bottom. The other half were thicker at the TOP.

The conclusion was that, prior to the molten-nickel-bed manufacturing method, glass-making was an imperfect process, and all glass made was of varying thickness. When it was time to install the glass, most people were putting it in with the thicker edge down for stability. Stained glass was the exception because the glass' orientation was dictated by the way it was cut to fit the mosaic, and the cuts were being made to minimize the amount of waste material, so not every piece was made with the thick edge on the 'bottom.'