Make A Hole - And Sustain It Indefinitely

Mick Ohrberg writes "Florian Merkt, Robert Deegan, and Erin Rericha, all at the University of Texas, have shown that a hole created in a water and cornstarch mixture with a puff of air can be persistent if the mixture is shaken at about 120Hz with acceleration being in the 12g-25g range. The physics behind the phenomenon has not yet been explained."

Comments

Re:My thoughts exactly

[Bastian]

Given that cornstarch and water is a shear-thickening fluid, and the vibration (at 15-25g no less) is certainly a shear force, this phenomenon is almost certainly due to the vibration causing the cornstarch and water to gain viscosity. This wouldn't necessarily give you a stable hole, though, so it's probably also helped by the cohesive forces in the fluid and some other effects, too.

I would guess that it's not that the scientists don't know why this is happening, just that their models aren't accurate/precise enough to predict it. Or maybe they left out some effect or force that is normally negligible in the models, but suddenly becomes important in this situation.