Scientists are keen to develop new materials for lightweight, flexible, and affordable wearable electronics so that, one day, dropping our smartphones won’t result in irreparable damage. One team at ...

Mixing corn starch and water in appropriate amounts produces a slurry that is liquid when stirred slowly but hardens when you punch it—a substance colorfully dubbed “oobleck.” (The name derives from a ...

It takes guts to attempt running across the surface of a liquid. Even more so if a sneaky physicist is nearby. Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid, meaning that its viscosity changes depending upon the ...

In this video I crush a large bottle of Oobleck in a hydraulic press. I have had many requests to crush a non-newtonian fluid ...

This article was taken from the February 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by ...

An aluminum rod just before (left) and just after (right) it strikes the surface of a cornflour and water suspension. Rather than penetrating, the rod causes the suspension below it to solidify for an ...

Mayonnaise’s texture is perfect for mimicking what a fuel capsule goes through when it’s blasted with lasers to ignite nuclear fusion, Emily Conover reported in “Mayonnaise may shed light on nuclear ...

Lots of people have demonstrated that, surprisingly, if you fill a pool with water and cornstarch you can run across it. Stop, and you sink. How that happens, though, has been something of a mystery ...