Polymers make up many of the materials we encounter every day, such as plastics and synthetic fabrics. They're also the secret science in some of your favorite toys: click to learn how polymers help us build sandcastles that never dry out!
Glaciers have shaped the face of our planet for millennia, developing over hundreds and thousands of years as layers of snow compress into solid ice. Or IS it . . . ? Click to learn how glaciers actually flow like a liquid, and how the surprisingly similar physics of Flubber can build our intuition for how real glaciers behave.
There is some serious science behind Silly Putty! This classic toy gets its unique properties from materials you can find around your house or at the grocery store. Click to learn how you can make your own Silly Putty at home and try some fun experiments to investigate its properties!
Why do so many fluids behave counterintuitively? Many substances in our lives – like oobleck, slime, or Silly Putty – don’t quite behave the way we expect a fluid to, despite some fluid-like properties. These substances fall into a special category: non-Newtonian fluids. Scientifically, this term is a bit of a catch-all for any substances that have a complicated relationship between their apparent viscosity and the force applied to them.