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Using Non-Newtonian Fluids To Fill Potholes
sciencehabit writes in with a link about a group of students who have come up with an interesting idea about how to fill potholes. "Non-Newtonian fluids are the stars of high school science demonstrations. In one example, an ooey-gooey batter made from corn starch and water oozes like a liquid when moved slowly. But punch it, or run across a giant puddle of it, and it becomes stiff like a solid. Now, a group of college students has figured out a new use for the strange stuff: filler for potholes."
The students plan to patent their invention, so they won't divulge their exact formulation,
Exact formulation isn't necessary for this application, as every 7th grade science class learns it by trial and error with a $1.29 box of corn starch.
You can do this in your kitchen in 10 minutes, and the stuff is fun to play with but nobody has found a real good application for it in over a
hundred years.
The trick in keeping the right proportions of water and starch, something that rain and sun will contrive to disrupt. Burst their bag and you have a big mess.
If you stop with a tire one of these, such as at a traffic light, you will sink into it, because given constant pressure, it will flow. It only resists changing pressure, or active kneading, not static weights.
But the beauty here is the rapidity with which these can be thrown down, and they fact that they flow into the pothole, conform to its shape, and thereby resist being ejected by cars.
P.S. It will be a cold day in hell before you find Police patching potholes.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
No, this is a feature. These can be used to pave "no parking/no standing" zones. Rule breaker's vehicles will get eaten, by the pavement. If used on streets, it will encourage drivers to avoid congested areas.
1. Mass TRANSIT is part of the transit budget.
2. There are more then one pothole. There a lot, and the queue is often very long. Plus, if work is going to be done for some other reason, they put off the pot hole repair. And some street required special permissions to close, as well as cost a lot of money in diversions.
3. Depends on your environment, and weather or not the budget allows for quality material and labor.
You need to close off portion of the street, have it located*, check for other work.
That means back ups, delays, store owners angry.
*marked to determine whats under the road at that spot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now, because it tends to stick on the tires (and the use of mats tends to be expensive over time), I suppose we can mix the pitch with sand and/or fine gravel before filling in the holes - should keep the pothole filled for some years without the need of revisiting it... what a boon for the taxpayers. (hmmm... I think I'm going to patent this)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I'm getting fed up of the constant references to the magical properties on "non-Newtonian" fluids. Non-Newtonian fluids have a huge range of properties in terms of their response to shear and change over time. This is constantly abused by geeks who should know better. Off the top of my head:
What people usually mean is a "shear-thickening" fluid such as corn starch and water. These become more effectively viscous in response to shear.
"Shear-thinning" fluids are *also* non-Newtonian, are fairly common, and have the exact opposite behaviour. Ketchup is a great example - shaking the bottle helps it flow more easily.
Another interesting case are Bingham plastics - these have a yield stress before they will flow. The classic example is toothpaste - it will stay as a lump on the bristles under its own weight, but spreads easily enough under pressure.
So the next time somebody wants to demonstrate non-Newtonian properties on their speaker cone, pass the ketchup!