Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Soft matter

Running on cornflour

Nature volume 487, pages 174–175 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

You can run across a swimming pool filled with a mixture of cornflour and water, but you sink if you stand still. Conventional understanding of this phenomenon is now being turned on its head. See Letter p.205

Cooks use small amounts of cornflour (cornstarch) powder to thicken soups and sauces. Surprisingly, when you add lots of cornflour to water, this creates a bizarre, gooey material that can switch from a liquid to a solid: it stubbornly resists rapid deformation (it is nearly impossible to scoop up with a spoon), but, when left unperturbed, becomes a thin liquid and can be slowly poured. YouTube is full of movies1 showing 'cornflour monsters' — which form when cornflour is vibrated on a loudspeaker — and people running across pools filled with cornflour solution; sometimes they trip and then slowly sink into this goo. These phenomena are widely believed to be caused by shear thickening, the rapid increase of viscosity with flow rate2,3,4,5. But on page 205 of this issue, Waitukaitis and Jaeger present6 strong experimental evidence that not shear, in which fluid layers slide past each other, but rather compression is key.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Thickened by compression.

References

  1. youtube.com/watch?v=S5SGiwS5L6I

  2. Wagner, N. J. & Brady, J. F. Phys. Today 62(10), 27–32 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Cheng, X., McCoy, J. H., Israelachvili, J. N. & Cohen, I. Science 333, 1276–1279 (2011).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Fall, A., Lemâitre, A., Bertrand, F., Bonn, D. & Ovarlez, G. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 268303 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Brown, E. et al. Nature Mater. 9, 220–224 (2010).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Waitukaitis, S. R. & Jaeger, H. M. Nature 487, 205–209 (2012).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Liu, A. J. & Nagel, S. R. Nature 396, 21–22 (1998).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Boyer, F., Guazzelli, É. & Pouliquen, O. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 188301 (2011)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Goyon, J., Colin, A., Ovarlez, G., Ajdari, A. & Bocquet, L. Nature 454, 84–87 (2008).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Nichol, K., Zanin, A., Bastien, R., Wandersman, E. & van Hecke, M. Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 078302 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Martin van Hecke is in the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Leiden University, PO Box 9504, 2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands.,

    Martin van Hecke

Authors
  1. Martin van Hecke
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Martin van Hecke.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

van Hecke, M. Running on cornflour. Nature 487, 174–175 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/487174a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/487174a

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing