Oh, the places you'll go...

when you read the fantastic imagination of Dr. Seuss. LOVE the man! Green Light can't get enough of his rhyme and meter. I thought that Green Eggs and Ham would be an appropriate part of our celebratory week, but the children said, "I do not like it Sam-I-Am."

We made Oobleck instead. Have you ever read this classic? It ranks right on up there with the best of the best.
Oobleck! The properties of this stuff are amazing. The kids (well, me too!) were totally smitten by it. We played the afternoon away with it.

What'd we learn about it? Oobleck is a material that is also known as a dilatant. A dilatant is a material that gets thicker with an increase of pressure. Oobleck is a liquid until pressure is applied to it and then it solidifies. It seems to defy Newton’s Third Law of Motion that states that every action will have an equal and opposite reaction. Here is a great way to test this … take two pie pans, fill one with water and one with oobleck, take both outside and slap them with an open hand. The water will splash while the oobleck stays put on the bottom of the pan. Water is a Newtonian fluid because it obeys Newton’s Laws of Motion. Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid because it defies Newton’s Third Law of Motion.


Give it a try with your little munchkins!

Oobleck!
--2 cups cornstarch
--1 cup water (add food coloring to the water before mixing if you want to color yours like we did)

Mix the two ingredients together. It takes a little bit of effort to get it all mixed in. Squeeze and stir to test it out before giving into the urge of adding more water to make it easier to mix.