Applied Materials Science

I was sitting around a few days ago, chewing the fat with a buddy of mine, whom I’ll call Tim (not his real name), and the topic of weather came up. This inevitably led to a post that I wrote years ago, even before the Emedics days.

Here in The Department of Lateral Thinking we (well me, mostly) think laterally about a lot of stuff including Materials Science.  For those of you who don’t know, Materials Science is the study of materials, and this includes materials like Oobleck. 

Anyone who has ever been a child whose parents read Dr. Suess books (and also read them to their kids) knows that Oobleck was the tenacious  green goo that fell out of the sky after bored King Derwin commissioned his magicians to conjure up a new kind of weather:

A young lad named Bartholomew played a key role in the narrative as he finally had to go back to the magicians to undo their spell. Things were getting too sticky.

Since you decided to keep reading, I’m here to tell you that when you mix cornstarch with water in the right proportions, you get a fluid with very interesting properties and through a stroke of sheer genius, some literary genius with a PhD in Materials Science decided to name this fluid Oobleck.  More on that later.

Now consider the photograph below.  The woman is admiring her new U Plunge bra (available wherever fine avant-garde underthings are sold, including Neimann Marcus, Victoria’s Secret, Mark’s Work Wearhouse, Walmart and Value Village). I’m not making this up, except the Value Village part.

Sure enough, this is definitely an avant-garde bra.  And by the way, the model  for this ad was selected because she has a really great personality, in case you were wondering.  Besides having a great personality though, she is probably also a great dancer.  But my main concern is what’s going to happen if she wears this bra out dancing?

And this is where Materials Science comes in.  Many materials could be used to improve the fabrication of this bra, but a couple of candidates spring immediately to mind, including graphene, Kevlar^TM and that ice that forms on your driveway after you tell your teenage kids NOT and I repeat NOT, to drive on it because the fresh snow will pack down to ice with the consistency of depleted uranium (or maybe osmium) and will still be there in the middle of August three hundred years later. 

Kids these days. Not that I’m bitter. 

The problem with designing a bra like this is that it has to be comfortable but it also has to provide support when support is called for, such as in situations when there are a lot of gyrations and undulations going on. 

Graphene is expensive; Kevlar^TM itches like crazy; driveway ice is cold. This is where Oobleck might come in handy.  (Not the green goo, the cornstarch-based fluid with the interesting properties.)

Cornstarch Oobleck has many interesting properties as noted but the one we are interested in here is that it is a non-Newtonian fluid.  This means that nobody except Sir Isaac Newton understood how it worked until recently. Basically, a non-Newtonian fluid flows nicely most of the time, except when it is stirred or agitated vigorously. Then it becomes stiff. However, by happy coincidence, when the stirring and agitation ceases, the Oobleck regains its fluidity. 

When I first read about cornstarch Oobleck in Popular Science, not a lot happened for quite a while but as soon as I learned about the U Plunge, my mind literally started whirring.  I immediately hit upon the notion that someone should give serious consideration to putting some cornstarch Oobleck into the cups of the U Plunge. 

Work with me on this.

Most of the time it (the Oobleck) would sit there in its containment vessels, minding its own business but as soon as there was a lot of agitation and/or stirring, the cornstarch molecules in the Oobleck would form long, stiff chains and start to stick together by friction.  Voila.  Support on demand.  When the agitation and/or stirring ceased, you would once again have a soft, pliable material. Trust me, I am not making any of this up.

And here is an additional benefit: let’s suppose that one night you go to a dance wearing your Oobleck-enhanced U Plunge.  A blinding snowstorm ensues while you are dancing.  After the dance is over, you foolishly decide to strike out for home but on the way you become disoriented and drive off the road.  For some reason you are miles from help.  You are trapped in the car for days but depending on your cup size, you don’t go hungry because you can eat the Oobleck from your bra!

I’m sure alert readers out there will think of many other similar applications for cornstarch Oobleck.  If you do, give your head a shake and say to yourself: “What the hell am I thinking? I must not have enough to do.” 

If you are still thinking about Oobleck at this point, you’re right; you don’t have enough to do, so you should apply to Grad  School.  I hear they are looking for people in the Faculty of Materials Science.