Oobleck (corn starch and water) will do this too. But presumably they already knew that. The article describes it as being known to happen in “complex fluids,” but that it was news that it happens in “simple fluids.” Presumably silly putty and oobleck are “complex fluids?”
Someone tell me the industries that are going to benefit the most from this in the short and long term and what I can expect to see in the next 30 years as a result of this discovery.
It’s a new, generalizable material-science property at STP. Those almost always find practical uses.
(Off the top of my head, a material that dissipates tension below a certain rate but fails when it is applied faster than that rate seems to resemble a mechanical breaker. As in not an electrical breaker that works mechanically. But one that decouples when you pull on it super hard. Being able to do that in fluids means one can potentially do that at very tiny scales.
More broadly, if simple fluids have a quasi-elastic mode, that has fundamental implications for hydrodynamics. I'd be super curious to know, for example, if anything similar to this occurs in air or water.)
Maybe it will not have any mmediate application. But guess what? It's still cool! And that can be its very own reward if you let it.
Oh, btw: electricity was a novelty toy for several long decades with no major practical applications. But that eventually changed because people kept researching it. And it changed the world.
Turns out glass has been known to be a fluid and to fracture for quite some time.
[edit: but glass is not a simple fluid.]
I thought glass was a solid?
Nope, lots of fluids that just flow over such a long period they appear solid.
This looks like silly putty behavior.
Oobleck (corn starch and water) will do this too. But presumably they already knew that. The article describes it as being known to happen in “complex fluids,” but that it was news that it happens in “simple fluids.” Presumably silly putty and oobleck are “complex fluids?”
Someone tell me the industries that are going to benefit the most from this in the short and long term and what I can expect to see in the next 30 years as a result of this discovery.
It’s a new, generalizable material-science property at STP. Those almost always find practical uses.
(Off the top of my head, a material that dissipates tension below a certain rate but fails when it is applied faster than that rate seems to resemble a mechanical breaker. As in not an electrical breaker that works mechanically. But one that decouples when you pull on it super hard. Being able to do that in fluids means one can potentially do that at very tiny scales.
More broadly, if simple fluids have a quasi-elastic mode, that has fundamental implications for hydrodynamics. I'd be super curious to know, for example, if anything similar to this occurs in air or water.)
That sounds like a lot of work for someone to go do for a quanta article about something neat a researcher noticed.
I worry that this sort of request will become the norm in the age of AI where people forget that people aren’t there to serve them.
Maybe it will not have any mmediate application. But guess what? It's still cool! And that can be its very own reward if you let it.
Oh, btw: electricity was a novelty toy for several long decades with no major practical applications. But that eventually changed because people kept researching it. And it changed the world.
You made an account to say that?
he had his llm to make an account to post this.