viscosity of a non newtonian fluid

the heading of this post makes it sound really intelligent and complex.

...its not. ha!

tonight, we were talking about how cool the discovery channel is. i wish you could buy just that channel alone, because i would. but then i might be tempted to skip work and stay home and learn about really interesting but relatively useless things all day.

we watched this video. watch it. it's cool.



after we watched it, brian was like, "hey. wanna go make a non newtonian fluid?"
and i was like, "YES!"

so we went into the kitchen, and mixed a cup of cornstarch with some water. oh, and some awesome neon green food coloring. yes! we played with it for at least half an hour, squeezing the solid mass in our fists and then letting the liquid slip between our fingers. so fun! brian is such a little scientist. he was explaining all of the sciencey things that were happening in big sciencey words to me, but i just giggled and played with the green goo.

have you ever done this before? i did it all the time as a kid. if you've never done it, stop reading this blog post, and go and do it now! mix cornstarch with about half as much water. then, be entertained.

luckily, our kitchen used to be the laundry room when this whole house was one home, so we just added a little more water and then the green slime go down the drain in the middle of our kitchen. i love that drain. came in handy when i dropped an entire jar of pickles on the floor last week.

only drawback to our awesome science experiment?
my hands are super itchy...
...i think i'm allergic to cornstarch.