Silly Science
Fellows' Reading Group
November 12, 2015

“Part of the Center’s mission is to introduce our foreign visitors to true American culture. I learned over a recent dinner of a huge lacuna in these efforts.”

This was my speech to the assembled Fellows before our reading group. It was intoned in the mock-serious voice of a documentary announcer.

I pull a bag of red plastic eggs from its hiding place. Before I can say anything more, Michael has already called out “Silly Putty.” The bouncy stuff is, I learned at the that moment, also a part of Canadian culture. The red eggs tumble out into a bowl. “Everyone—please take one.”

Silly Putty, I continued to explain, is actually quite interesting scientifically. It is a non-Newtonian fluid. If you pull it slowly, it stretches slowly. I pull while I say this and it forms a long thin strand that falls into my lap.

But if you pull it quickly, it shatters like a solid. I form a U shape and pull it sharply. It snaps at the bend in the U, with the broken ends forming sharp edges. Then, unintentionally, the putty slips from my hand and hits the table. I’d forgot to mention that it bounces too!

“Silly Putty is a very slowly flowing liquid. If I put it on the top of this plastic pyramid, over the course of few hours it will flow. We could make a time-lapse video of it.”

I pull a small camera on a tiny tripod from my bag and set it up.

We can now turn to the serious business at hand, Jim and Cailin’s reading. The butter cinnamon coffee cake, I notice, is already half gone.

Before we can proceed, Michel explains one last scientific connection. In the 19th century, light and electromagnetism were thought to be carried by an elastic medium, the electromagnetic ether. It’s properties, it turns out, were quite like silly putty.

As the discussion proceeded, the Fellows fiddled with their putties and the putty on the pyramid flowed, slowly. The camera sprang into life every two minutes and took a single frame. The time-lapse video didn’t quite work. The time lapse camera runs automatically and, unfortunately, after the first frame, it refocussed on the people in the background. The flowing putty is a foreground blur. The video image is still a little fun.

See it here (4.1 MB).

John D. Norton