Weird Science: The Accidental Invention of Silly Putty

Coincidentally an idiot is invented. During World War II, engineer James Lite was trying to create an inexpensive alternative to synthetic rubber at the Connecticut General Electric Lab at the American War Production Committee. When he drops boric acid to silicone oil, he is more elastic than rubber, has elasticity, and has strange additional features: when you flatten it with newspaper or cartoon book pages, It will find perfection Printed prints

It's cool, but Wright's discovery has no advantage over existing synthetic rubber. The government did not want his "nut patte", but a few years later, businessman Peter Hodgson noticed what the party is like. He renamed it "stupid patty", sold it as a toy, and packed it in colored plastic eggs.

Stupid patties have become one of the most popular toys of the 20th century ... and people pick up dirt and lint in order to make the table more stable and paste it on the rocking legs I started to use it for practical purposes. Apollo 8 Moon mission astronauts use sticky materials to ensure their tools are safe under zero gravity!

Stupid Patty is very flexible, but it will also be broken clean. Strange thing is that if you strike it with enough power it will also break. In 1989, a graduate student at Alfred University in New York dropped a 100 pound Silly Putty ball from the roof of the campus building to see what happened. What? After a huge ball falls, it hits the air of about 8 feet and then hits the ground a second time it will break.

As bounce spat, Silly Putty is known for its rare features: it bounces and bounces, it breaks; it also floats in liquids and can form a puddle in plenty of time. Stupid putty and most other retail putty products have added viscoelastic agents to reduce fluidity and keep the shape of the putty. The abnormal flow characteristics of Silly Putty are due to the components of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) which is a viscoelastic material. Viscoelasticity is a non-Newtonian flow that characterizes materials that act as viscous liquids for a long time but act as elastic solids in a short period of time. Since its apparent viscosity increases directly in proportion to the amount of applied force, Silly Putty can be characterized as inflation fluid.

Stupid putty is sold in egg shaped plastic containers in the form of 13 grams (0.46 oz) of clay. The Silly Putty brand is owned by Crayola LLC (formerly known as Binney & Smith). As of July 2009, 20,000 Silly Putty eggs were sold each day. Since 1950, more than 300 million silly eggs (about 4,500 tons of short tons or 4,100 tons) are on sale. It is available in various colors including glow and metallic in the dark. Other brands sometimes offer similar materials that resemble various colors that are placed in larger size containers, or that have different properties like magnetic or iridescent

The credibility of Silly Putty's invention is controversial and it is believed that there are different causes in the newly established Dow Corning's Earl Warrick, Harvey Chin, and Scottish-born inventor James Wright in Connecticut State New Haven I will. The work of General Electric Company. Throughout his life, he and his colleague Rob Roy McGregor claimed to get a stupid Patty patent before the light, but the history of Crayola's silly Patty invented it first in 1943 . Both investigators have independently found that the reaction of boric acid and silicone oil produces a viscous elastic material with several unique properties. Non-toxic putty bounces back as it falls, extends far beyond normal rubber, does not cause mold and has a very high melting temperature. However, this material does not have all the properties necessary to replace rubber.