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How Silly Putty Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant uh with me as always
0:18
Speaker 1: looking good. I am, yeah, thank you, Josh um that
0:22
Speaker 1: makes this stuff you should know. And you were looking
0:24
Speaker 1: good as well, sir. Set a new shirt. No I'm not.
0:28
Speaker 1: It's I don't know, less than six months old. I
0:32
Speaker 1: guess it's kind of new, all right. I'm trying to
0:36
Speaker 1: think it was pouring way I could start a show
0:38
Speaker 1: as you pretty high up there. Josh is wearing a
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Speaker 1: lovely stripe blue button up as he has one to do,
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Speaker 1: and I'm wearing a Everything is Bigger in Texas green
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Speaker 1: T shirt. We're both in jeans. I have on my
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Speaker 1: last chance garage hat. Yep, anything else I want to
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Speaker 1: I want to set the scene for once. I've got
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Speaker 1: a beard, now you've had a beard. I'm clean shaven,
1:02
Speaker 1: clean shaven. Yeah, I've started to do the clean shaven
1:04
Speaker 1: thing more than scruffy. I was doing scruffy for a while.
1:08
Speaker 1: Are you which way do you like? Hope for you? Yeah,
1:12
Speaker 1: I think whatever you mean likes, which is clearly not scruffy.
1:15
Speaker 1: She likes it both ways. Oh yeah, yeah, all right,
1:19
Speaker 1: that's that's that is the most boring way to ever
1:21
Speaker 1: start a show. We should all go to sleep. Now
1:24
Speaker 1: I've got a story for you, all right, all right,
1:26
Speaker 1: and you know some of this so you don't have
1:28
Speaker 1: to pretend like you're surprised. Back in eight thirty nine,
1:33
Speaker 1: there is a man named Charles Goodyear, and Charles Goodyear
1:37
Speaker 1: whose last name you might recognize for good reason, uh,
1:40
Speaker 1: figured out a way to make rubber, natural rubber tougher
1:45
Speaker 1: than leather. It's called vulcanization. Yes, okay, So this process
1:50
Speaker 1: of vulcanization took rubber, which is naturally um kind of
1:54
Speaker 1: stickier gooey at warmer temperatures and um rigid at cooler temperatures,
2:00
Speaker 1: and made it much more a pliable, much more, much
2:03
Speaker 1: more flexible, but able to stand up to really punishing
2:05
Speaker 1: conditions like heat, lots of pressure, and force, which made
2:10
Speaker 1: it perfect for car tires, hoses, fan belts, all of
2:15
Speaker 1: the stuff that we use rubber for today. This guy
2:19
Speaker 1: is the reason we're able to write the reason that's
2:21
Speaker 1: tough enough. Yes. Now, the fact that this came in
2:25
Speaker 1: nine means that this innovation came during the Industrial Revolution,
2:28
Speaker 1: which means that all that stuff that the rubber could
2:31
Speaker 1: be used for could be mass produced, which means that
2:34
Speaker 1: we needed a vast source of rubber as a raw
2:38
Speaker 1: material for this vulcanization process. And luckily, I guess you
2:42
Speaker 1: could say, at least for the Westerners, uh, we knew
2:46
Speaker 1: where to get vast stores of rubber, the Amazon, which
2:49
Speaker 1: is where this very specific type of rubber tree is
2:52
Speaker 1: indigenous and is found in vast supply. Right, all right,
2:57
Speaker 1: you're with me so far. So we went down on
2:59
Speaker 1: the Amazon, and as a result, these parts of Brazil
3:01
Speaker 1: that were just totally impoverished were suddenly suddenly found themselves
3:05
Speaker 1: at the center of a global rubber boom and just
3:09
Speaker 1: became decadently wealthy, like almost overnight. Brazil and the Amazon
3:14
Speaker 1: was the center of this global trade and rubber for
3:17
Speaker 1: decades until eighteen seventy six. These British guys snuck some
3:23
Speaker 1: rubber tree seeds out of the Amazon and took them
3:27
Speaker 1: to the botanical gardens in London, Okay, and they started
3:32
Speaker 1: to work on forming a hybrid that was even better
3:34
Speaker 1: than the ones in Brazil. A hybrid plant, a hybrid
3:37
Speaker 1: rubber tree that could coincidentally thrive in British colonies in
3:41
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia. Perfect, it was perfect for the British. By
3:46
Speaker 1: nineteen ten, the Brazilian stranglehold on the rubber um trade
3:52
Speaker 1: was being challenged and was in real trouble by countries
3:55
Speaker 1: like Malaysia and Sri Lanka, Um and Thailand, and by
4:01
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty the Far East held the basically the monopoly
4:06
Speaker 1: on the rubber market. All right, that's a good background. Thanks,
4:10
Speaker 1: I'm almost done. So about the time the Southeast Asia
4:16
Speaker 1: started to dominate rubber, we needed it even more than
4:18
Speaker 1: when Brazil dominated rubber because cars were being mass produced
4:23
Speaker 1: in each of those required four rubber tires, right, So
4:27
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia's hold on rubber was even stronger than than
4:30
Speaker 1: the one that Brazil had, plus one in the trunk. Yeah,
4:33
Speaker 1: that's right, five um. And by the time World War
4:37
Speaker 1: Two rolled around, we'd come to rely on rubber so
4:40
Speaker 1: much that it was calculated the US military the Pentagon
4:44
Speaker 1: needed thirty two pounds of rubber for every troop on
4:46
Speaker 1: the ground for things like tires, boots, anything you need
4:49
Speaker 1: rubber for, right, every soldier, which makes it a It
4:52
Speaker 1: was a very very very big deal. When the Japanese
4:56
Speaker 1: successfully invaded the Pacific theater, including Malaysia in Sri Lanka,
5:00
Speaker 1: including all these rubber producing places and cut off the
5:04
Speaker 1: rubber supply to the US, and We're like, we need rubber, yeah,
5:08
Speaker 1: we need it bad. And they were like, well we've
5:11
Speaker 1: got it. Yes, And by the way, let's go. When
5:13
Speaker 1: you win, there's going to be stragglers on these islands.
5:17
Speaker 1: You will one day podcast about them. Hero. So what happened, Chuck, well, Josh.
5:23
Speaker 1: Because the US is industrious and bright and has it
5:28
Speaker 1: never say die attitude, they said, you know what, why
5:31
Speaker 1: don't we commission some labs and academic institutions to develop
5:36
Speaker 1: a synthetic rubber. So they put out the call because
5:39
Speaker 1: they needed this for the wartime demand. And UH, all
5:42
Speaker 1: these chemists got to work on it, and UH invented
5:46
Speaker 1: something called g R dash S, which is Government Rubber styrene,
5:52
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be a great replacement for rubber,
5:54
Speaker 1: and by we were producing twice the amount of all
6:00
Speaker 1: all the world's rubber combined, the synthetic rubber and synthetic
6:04
Speaker 1: rubber in the US. Wow. So this is like one
6:07
Speaker 1: of the most this is one of the biggest chemical
6:10
Speaker 1: chemical engineering accomplishments ever created, ever undertaken. Right, um so
6:15
Speaker 1: g RS huge still in use today. Right, is like
6:19
Speaker 1: the standard for synthetic rubber. Um it changed everything like
6:24
Speaker 1: that was it was like bye bye, Malaysia, Sorry about
6:26
Speaker 1: your your rubber monopoly falling apart. You shouldn't have let
6:30
Speaker 1: you pain invade. Well, I'm sure they still had plenty
6:33
Speaker 1: of customers. I'm sure they still did. They weren't like, oh,
6:35
Speaker 1: we got all this rubber, right, what are we gonna do?
6:38
Speaker 1: We we we chose the wrong team. Uh So, this,
6:42
Speaker 1: this synthetic rubber, this triumph of chemical engineering, was not
6:46
Speaker 1: without setbacks though, Right. Well, no, anytime you're trying to
6:51
Speaker 1: synthesize something like that, it's gonna there's gonna be some
6:53
Speaker 1: ups and downs. And this was a nationwide challenge by
6:55
Speaker 1: the War Production Board. It wasn't just like hey, you
6:58
Speaker 1: five guys over here. It was like, attention in all
7:00
Speaker 1: chemical engineers, all chemists, anybody who has anything to do
7:03
Speaker 1: with chemistry. We need a synthetic rubber, and we needed
7:07
Speaker 1: an abundant supply. So there are a lot of people
7:10
Speaker 1: working on this, and one of those guys was James
7:13
Speaker 1: Wright of General Electric GE. He mixed bork acid with
7:17
Speaker 1: silicon oil, and uh, so you know that this is
7:20
Speaker 1: gonna be a great synthetic rubber. Unfortunately it wasn't a
7:24
Speaker 1: great synthetic rubber. His quote unquote bouncing putty is what
7:29
Speaker 1: he called it. But Gee thought I had some promise.
7:33
Speaker 1: Gee thought I had some promise. But it did pretty
7:35
Speaker 1: much wallow away in obscurity at first, right for um,
7:41
Speaker 1: almost a decade. It just kind of made the rounds
7:43
Speaker 1: to other places like, hey, can your guys do anything
7:46
Speaker 1: like with this, We'll share the patent, whatever, just figure
7:50
Speaker 1: out what we can do with this, and uh, apparently
7:53
Speaker 1: GE got this. Uh. It was so widespread that it
7:57
Speaker 1: made its way to a party that a guy named
8:00
Speaker 1: Peter Hodgson, who owned an ad agency in New Haven, Connecticut,
8:04
Speaker 1: attended a cocktail party. Remember spam. That's where spam came from.
8:07
Speaker 1: Cocktail party in New Year's Eve. Great things happen when
8:09
Speaker 1: you get together and drink. Uh. This guy was at
8:12
Speaker 1: a at a cocktail party and saw some people playing
8:15
Speaker 1: with this um bouncing putty that James as James Wright
8:18
Speaker 1: called it, and said, you know what, these adults seem
8:21
Speaker 1: fascinated by this. I just happened to be working on
8:25
Speaker 1: a catalog for a toy store, and I think this
8:28
Speaker 1: would make a great adult novelty. So he approached the
8:31
Speaker 1: lady who owned the Block toy store, right yeah, and
8:35
Speaker 1: I got there's varying accounts of this story. I think
8:38
Speaker 1: it's one of those deals where because I saw somewhere
8:41
Speaker 1: where she was the one that saw it and contacted
8:43
Speaker 1: him and said, hey, can you put this in my catalog?
8:47
Speaker 1: So either way, Peter Hodgson and Ruth fall Gadder, who
8:52
Speaker 1: owned the Block Shop toy store, they they decided to
8:56
Speaker 1: put it on the pages of their their catalog to
9:00
Speaker 1: sell as a toy. Right and it was two dollars,
9:04
Speaker 1: not chump change in nine. No, it's definitely not um
9:08
Speaker 1: and it was an adult novelty as they reckoned, right, Sorry,
9:14
Speaker 1: just say adult novelty and a lot of things come
9:17
Speaker 1: to mind, Spitzer Gifts, I know, I know. It wasn't
9:21
Speaker 1: that kind of an adult worldly okay, uh no, it
9:24
Speaker 1: was an adult diversion. It became a big seller, is
9:28
Speaker 1: what it became. Yeah. So yeah, it was the block
9:30
Speaker 1: shops biggest seller, one of them. Um. And then this
9:34
Speaker 1: this I found a little hazy for reasons that remain unclear.
9:37
Speaker 1: Did you find anything out about why fall got her
9:40
Speaker 1: stopped backing the product. I couldn't find anything on that,
9:43
Speaker 1: but I guess even though it sold big for her,
9:45
Speaker 1: she was just like whatever. Maybe she just had her
9:48
Speaker 1: thing going and she's like, why don't I want to
9:49
Speaker 1: start a new product. I'm a toy store owner? Yeah,
9:52
Speaker 1: why do I want to be a millionaire? Exactly when
9:54
Speaker 1: he's the root of all evil for her, R. Rubic,
9:58
Speaker 1: I have no no plans for the exactly so uh so,
10:02
Speaker 1: the whole, the whole, the whole drive, the whole push
10:06
Speaker 1: to make this into something big, what we now know
10:09
Speaker 1: as silly Putty fell completely the Hodgson and he turned
10:12
Speaker 1: into a whirling dervish. Between nineteen fifty, he borrowed a
10:17
Speaker 1: hundred and forty seven dollars and bought another batch from
10:20
Speaker 1: ge hired a Yale student to roll them into uh
10:24
Speaker 1: twenty eight graham one ounce balls, packaged them in plastic
10:28
Speaker 1: Easter eggs, and sold them to double Day bookshops and
10:34
Speaker 1: Neiman Marcus along the way. He also um took them
10:39
Speaker 1: to some chemical engineers in Schenectady, right yeah, and said, hey,
10:43
Speaker 1: copy that reverse engineering. It's like that website that has
10:47
Speaker 1: like all of your favorite recipes from like Applebee's and
10:49
Speaker 1: Kentucky Fried Chicken. Reverse engineering. First get chicken from a
10:53
Speaker 1: sealed bag, right, that's pretty sauced exactly, and put it
10:56
Speaker 1: in a pan. Yes, they're like, do you have Cisco's
10:59
Speaker 1: phone number? So that's what he did, and you're right,
11:02
Speaker 1: he did make pretty quick work of it, um, because
11:04
Speaker 1: after he opened a manufacturing plant. Yes, all this is
11:08
Speaker 1: in a year he first encountered this stuff in this
11:11
Speaker 1: is nineteen fifty. He believed in this what would be
11:14
Speaker 1: Actually he's he had already settled on silly Putty as
11:17
Speaker 1: the name. Yeah, well, he was an ad agency guy,
11:19
Speaker 1: so brain storing some names, evaluated fifteen of them, was like,
11:22
Speaker 1: this is the one he trademarked. It was Nutty Putty one.
11:25
Speaker 1: I think that was one of them. I think that
11:27
Speaker 1: would have sold to So he had the silly Putty name.
11:29
Speaker 1: At this point, opened the manufacturing plant in Connecticut, and
11:33
Speaker 1: soon after that landed Neeman Marcus in double day bookshops
11:37
Speaker 1: as customers, which was huge, it was, but it became
11:40
Speaker 1: even huger when um some writers from the new Yorker
11:43
Speaker 1: went to Double Day, and they encountered, do you want
11:47
Speaker 1: to read this part? You're I'm not gonna read it,
11:49
Speaker 1: Scotch and read this one all right. It was in
11:52
Speaker 1: the Talk of the Town section in nineteen fifty in
11:55
Speaker 1: the New Yorker. We went into the Double Day bookshop
11:57
Speaker 1: at Fifth Avenue and fifty second Street the other day,
12:00
Speaker 1: intending in our innocence to buy a book, and found
12:02
Speaker 1: all the clerks busy selling silly putty, a gooey, pinkish,
12:06
Speaker 1: repellent looking commodity. The commodity I love that that comes
12:11
Speaker 1: in plastic containers, the size and shape of eggs. We
12:14
Speaker 1: sought out Mr Lee Weber, the manager of the bookshop,
12:17
Speaker 1: to ascertain the mysterious link between it and Double Day.
12:19
Speaker 1: He told us that silly putty is the most terrific
12:22
Speaker 1: item and that Double Day shops have been privileged to
12:25
Speaker 1: handle it since forever. Amber yea forever Amber. I looked
12:29
Speaker 1: it up. It was a bestseller from the forties. It
12:32
Speaker 1: was about a woman in Restoration England's late seventeenth century
12:35
Speaker 1: England who, through her sexy wit, went from rags to
12:39
Speaker 1: riches and became like the favorite mistress of Charles the
12:41
Speaker 1: second was banned in Boston. Yeah so because of this
12:45
Speaker 1: um pretentious bit of cynical whimsy that appeared in the
12:50
Speaker 1: New Yorker, Um, the sales overnight, uh for Silly Putty
12:56
Speaker 1: just exploded. He got Hodgson got um three hundred, seven
13:02
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand orders. Two D Man, Why did
13:06
Speaker 1: I quarter of a mill? You're probably thinking three quarters?
13:09
Speaker 1: I was. I was thinking about the orders that weren't there, exactly.
13:13
Speaker 1: He got a quarter of a mill in three days,
13:15
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million orders, and at two bucks
13:17
Speaker 1: a pop, that's a lot of money, especially considering that
13:21
Speaker 1: he only half a million dollars. Yeah, yeah, that's well. Yeah,
13:26
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the half a million he didn't make.
14:03
Speaker 1: Uh So it was like basically an overnight success thanks
14:05
Speaker 1: to Neiman Marcus, Double Day Books and the New Yorker
14:08
Speaker 1: and GE and the Japanese. But I mean again, this
14:12
Speaker 1: is all happening in a year that's pretty speedy. This
14:14
Speaker 1: is a whirlwind year for this guy. I'm happy for him.
14:18
Speaker 1: Just just looking back on this story, I hope he
14:20
Speaker 1: was a good guy and he didn't like beat up
14:22
Speaker 1: little kids on his way to work. He passed away
14:25
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six. I hope before then he didn't
14:28
Speaker 1: do bad things, but he saw it become a huge
14:31
Speaker 1: success because when he died in nineteen seventy six, Silly
14:34
Speaker 1: Putty was in twenty two countries plus the United States,
14:38
Speaker 1: with sales exceeding five million a year. And that was
14:40
Speaker 1: in seventy six. Yeah, which I looked it up. That's
14:43
Speaker 1: nineteen million today, ten dollars, I think. But um, it's
14:48
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's pretty good. Yeah. Uh yeah, they seem to,
14:52
Speaker 1: they seem to, Yeah, well he's set up um Arnold
14:55
Speaker 1: Clark Inc. And I never found out who Arnold Clark kiss.
14:59
Speaker 1: Maybe that was an alien of his, who knows, um,
15:02
Speaker 1: But Yeahola apparently owns Silly Putty. Now, now we've just
15:07
Speaker 1: described the history of Silly Putty. That should be enough. Um,
15:11
Speaker 1: But I mean, surely there's no one out there who
15:14
Speaker 1: hasn't played a Silly Putty before. I used to play
15:18
Speaker 1: with it like crazy when I was a kid. And
15:19
Speaker 1: one thing I would do, which is something that they
15:22
Speaker 1: found out. You know, it was originally intended for adults,
15:24
Speaker 1: and they were kind of surprised to learn that kids
15:26
Speaker 1: were into it and it didn't take long for the
15:29
Speaker 1: kids sales to dwarf that of adults. It was nine
15:34
Speaker 1: sales overtook it. Initially he said, He's like, you know,
15:38
Speaker 1: this is great for adults because you can come home
15:40
Speaker 1: and unwind at the end of the day by squeezing
15:42
Speaker 1: it and just blowing off steam by copying newsprint with it,
15:46
Speaker 1: May I, And that's what I did with it, was
15:49
Speaker 1: was copied comic books. So in that New Yorker article
15:52
Speaker 1: they interviewed Hodgson and he had he had a quote,
15:55
Speaker 1: it means five minutes of escape from neurosis. It means
15:58
Speaker 1: not having to worry about career or family difficulties, and
16:01
Speaker 1: it appeals to people of superior intellect. The inherent ridiculousness
16:05
Speaker 1: of the material acts as an emotional release to hard
16:08
Speaker 1: pressed adults. So it obviously worked because we're not in
16:12
Speaker 1: Korea any longer. It's interesting, though, that he was wrong.
16:16
Speaker 1: I think it's funny how somebody can be wrong on
16:17
Speaker 1: something and still be right, you know what I mean,
16:21
Speaker 1: Like all the uses and the intent was he was
16:23
Speaker 1: completely wrong, but it's still skyrocketed, and he's like, oh, well,
16:27
Speaker 1: it's for kids. Then he kind of cast a wide net.
16:30
Speaker 1: On the patent license, it was for um stress relief
16:34
Speaker 1: hand therapy for people who needed it. Um it could
16:37
Speaker 1: be used to block out low frequency noises. Yeah, they
16:40
Speaker 1: still claim you can do all this stuff today, like
16:42
Speaker 1: it's good for therapy and for like gumming up holes
16:47
Speaker 1: and cleaning typewriters key which is a huge use these days.
16:51
Speaker 1: Well computer keys. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about this,
16:54
Speaker 1: um but yeah, so the guy was very much focused
16:57
Speaker 1: on it being uh um for are adults, but kids
17:01
Speaker 1: kind of took it for themselves, mainly because you could.
17:04
Speaker 1: One of the great properties of silly putty is you
17:06
Speaker 1: can stretch it out, push it down on newsprint, and
17:10
Speaker 1: you have a mirror image of it. That's what I said.
17:12
Speaker 1: That's what he used to do. Oh you did say that. Yeah, comics, comics,
17:15
Speaker 1: and you can't it's harder to it's harder to do
17:17
Speaker 1: that these days because the print they use, like you
17:20
Speaker 1: literally have to find like a newspaper in order to
17:25
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, you can't do it on the Internet
17:29
Speaker 1: or a magazine. Yeah, you can't do it on a kindle.
17:32
Speaker 1: You could do it on a magazine. H No, I
17:35
Speaker 1: think you can know, dude, it's got to pick up
17:37
Speaker 1: the ink. I know I can't do it on a magazine.
17:40
Speaker 1: I can tell you from reading Harper's by the Pool
17:43
Speaker 1: that that's stuff smears. And if it's smears, I guarantee
17:46
Speaker 1: you can get it on silly putty. Uh. Lucky for
17:50
Speaker 1: him though, it was non toxic, so when kids started
17:52
Speaker 1: playing with it and inevitably putting it in their mouth,
17:55
Speaker 1: there were no issues with that. Right, So how you
17:58
Speaker 1: should not eat it? We should say that don't eat
18:00
Speaker 1: anything that's not food or anything that has the name
18:03
Speaker 1: silly in it, or putty, silly string, silly anything. Um.
18:06
Speaker 1: So Hodgson made mention of its um inherent ridiculousness of
18:11
Speaker 1: the material. Right, Um, it has some really strange properties. Uh.
18:15
Speaker 1: He originally called it so. He described it as a
18:18
Speaker 1: solid liquid right when you um. When you stretch it,
18:23
Speaker 1: it's like taffy. It stretches, right. Uh. If you pull it,
18:28
Speaker 1: it just snaps apart if you quickly and with a
18:31
Speaker 1: lot of force. Um. If you stick it to like say,
18:35
Speaker 1: um bookcase, you come back a few days later, it
18:39
Speaker 1: will have very slowly moved down, very slowly, very which
18:43
Speaker 1: means it flows, which is weird. But we'll get to
18:46
Speaker 1: that in a minute. Um. And when you roll it
18:48
Speaker 1: up into a ball, it bounces higher than rubber. Yeah,
18:51
Speaker 1: they did a test. They rolled it into like a
18:53
Speaker 1: perfect little ball, and they dropped it with no force
18:56
Speaker 1: from three ft and it bounce bounces back two and
18:59
Speaker 1: a half feet. Supposedly, that is dynamite. Not bad. And
19:03
Speaker 1: if you throw it down real hard, you know you've
19:05
Speaker 1: got yourself a super ball in your hands. So what
19:08
Speaker 1: is the stuff? Well, what are the the what's the
19:11
Speaker 1: science of silly putty chuck? The science of so? Well,
19:15
Speaker 1: before we get there, can I say about the egg?
19:18
Speaker 1: There are several varying accounts on why it was put
19:20
Speaker 1: in an egg. Some people say it was because his
19:24
Speaker 1: first batch went out before Easter and then he just said, hey,
19:28
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty good idea, let's just keep it in
19:30
Speaker 1: the egg. Other people say he got the inspiration while
19:33
Speaker 1: eating eggs one morning, good for you. And still other
19:36
Speaker 1: people say that he couldn't find another container in abundance,
19:42
Speaker 1: and he had like a line on these plastic eggs,
19:45
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'll just use desk because this
19:47
Speaker 1: is a pretty good way to put it in there.
19:49
Speaker 1: It's about an ounce so I let's just do that
19:51
Speaker 1: either way. That became the signature that's still used today.
19:56
Speaker 1: Anybody full of egg carms, right, the egg fill is
20:00
Speaker 1: silly putty. I feel silly. You could probably get silly
20:03
Speaker 1: putty full of egg, but you don't have to do
20:04
Speaker 1: it yourself at home. Um. Alright, So back to what
20:09
Speaker 1: this stuff is, um, josh, it is a polymer, right, yeah,
20:16
Speaker 1: it's a visco elastic polymer. Basically, it's subject to the
20:22
Speaker 1: science of fluid chemistry. Right. And fluids are not necessarily liquids.
20:27
Speaker 1: Liquids are fluids, but not all fluids or liquids. Gas
20:31
Speaker 1: can be a fluid, Some semi solid substances can be fluid. Basically,
20:36
Speaker 1: a fluid is anything that yields to slight pressure and
20:40
Speaker 1: has no definite shape. Fluid Your your gut is at
20:48
Speaker 1: least okay. Um. So so that's uh, that's the science.
20:53
Speaker 1: That's the part of chemistry and physics that we're looking
20:55
Speaker 1: as fluid chemistry. Um. And the ruling principle of that
21:00
Speaker 1: of fluid chemistry is viscosity. Where do we talk about this?
21:03
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about viscosity. We talked about viscosity
21:06
Speaker 1: in UM quicksand right sheer mayonnaise This quas visquosity, Josh.
21:12
Speaker 1: Viscosity is uh. It measures how much a fluid resist
21:16
Speaker 1: flow at a certain temperature. So so viscosity is resistance
21:19
Speaker 1: resistance to flow. If you're like me and you can
21:21
Speaker 1: never remember what's viscosity, what's viscous, or what's high or
21:25
Speaker 1: low viscous, viscosity is resistance to flow. Actually the easiest
21:29
Speaker 1: way to remember is water is low. That pretty much
21:32
Speaker 1: says it all, just so, that's easy. Like peanut butter
21:34
Speaker 1: would have a high viscosity, water would have a low viscosity.
21:38
Speaker 1: That's pretty easy way to it has a high resistance
21:41
Speaker 1: to flow or low resistance to flow, like honey or
21:44
Speaker 1: molasses and um. Viscosity is often measured in pascal seconds,
21:50
Speaker 1: Not so much anymore now it's measured by dying seconds
21:54
Speaker 1: per square centimeter, also called poise, and ten poise equals
21:58
Speaker 1: one pascal second. What that means I cannot. I couldn't
22:03
Speaker 1: rent my mind around before then every site that I
22:06
Speaker 1: saw it took it for granted that I understood what
22:10
Speaker 1: what that measures. But it measures viscosity or flow. As
22:14
Speaker 1: far as I understand, what I love is that someone
22:17
Speaker 1: somewhere said, uh, pascal seconds just said and cutting it right.
22:21
Speaker 1: The guy whose last name was Poise or poisel, I
22:25
Speaker 1: believe that's what happ came up with poise um. But yeah,
22:28
Speaker 1: so that's uh how viscosity is measured UM. And the
22:33
Speaker 1: more pascal seconds are, the more poise there are, the
22:37
Speaker 1: more the higher the viscosity is UM. But the thing
22:41
Speaker 1: about viscous fluids, they all well, I should say, most
22:47
Speaker 1: of them are subject to um temperature. That's what affects
22:53
Speaker 1: their viscosity. If you if you have cold honey that
22:56
Speaker 1: you're trying to get out of the bottle, it doesn't
22:59
Speaker 1: flow very well. But if it's a room temperature or
23:01
Speaker 1: if it's warm, it flows. It's it's much less viscous, right,
23:05
Speaker 1: it flows much more easily because it's subject just to temperature.
23:09
Speaker 1: That makes it a newtonium fluid. That's also a pet peeve.
23:13
Speaker 1: When you go to a place and get pancakes or
23:15
Speaker 1: waffles or French toast and they have the heated syrup.
23:19
Speaker 1: Oh I like that, you do? Yeah? I like my
23:21
Speaker 1: syrup thick? Okay um, you like it thin and watery
23:25
Speaker 1: like that? Yeah, as long as it's warm it's watery
23:28
Speaker 1: because it's low and viscosity and it's warm. Um, but
23:32
Speaker 1: that's but it's just temperature. There has nothing to do
23:35
Speaker 1: with force or pressure or anything like that. If a
23:37
Speaker 1: fluid is subject to not only temperature but also force,
23:42
Speaker 1: it's what's called a non Newtonium fluid. Chuck, are we
24:14
Speaker 1: at the email point? I believe we are, Chuck. This
24:17
Speaker 1: was pretty nato. We got an email from a young
24:19
Speaker 1: listener just a few weeks ago that seemingly had nothing
24:24
Speaker 1: to do with this podcast. But Josh and his wisdom
24:27
Speaker 1: looks back and says, hey, this kid actually described this
24:31
Speaker 1: Newtonian fluid very well. Yeah, and so let's just read
24:34
Speaker 1: his description. And it came before we decided to do
24:36
Speaker 1: silly putties, so it was all just serendipitous, just sitting there.
24:39
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna read the holy he and this
24:41
Speaker 1: marks the first time that a listener has actually contributed
24:44
Speaker 1: to the body of the show's information. And so this
24:47
Speaker 1: is a UM. He's a young listener too, as we'll
24:49
Speaker 1: find out, Dearest Josh, Chuck and Jerry, and he spelled
24:53
Speaker 1: Jerry's name correctly right out of the gates. Kids on
24:55
Speaker 1: the Ball, Hi guys, I wanted to say how much
24:58
Speaker 1: I love your podcast and your thing voices which get
25:01
Speaker 1: me through long road trips. I may be considered one
25:03
Speaker 1: of your younger quote listeners since I am eleven years young.
25:08
Speaker 1: I needed an excuse to email you, so I'll tell
25:10
Speaker 1: you a little bit about non newtonium fluids. This kid,
25:14
Speaker 1: Sir Isaac Newton said that fluids such as water flow
25:17
Speaker 1: continuously regardless of forces that act upon it. So if
25:21
Speaker 1: you put your hand under a faucet, the water still
25:23
Speaker 1: flows no matter what, making it a newtonium fluid. But
25:27
Speaker 1: non newtonium fluids like catch up blood and yogurt behave
25:30
Speaker 1: differently based on the amount of stress added onto it.
25:34
Speaker 1: Try adding corn starch to water. If you put your
25:37
Speaker 1: hand into it, it behaves like a liquid and allows
25:39
Speaker 1: your hand to go through it. But if you punch
25:41
Speaker 1: it with a lot of force, it behaves like a
25:43
Speaker 1: solid and stops your hand from entering. Corn Starch and
25:47
Speaker 1: water is called you black, like the doctor Seus's book Bartholomew,
25:51
Speaker 1: Bartholomew and the O Black. Sorry if that was long
25:54
Speaker 1: boring or not entertaining. I don't write articles as well
25:57
Speaker 1: as you, guys, anyway, I love the podcast and keep
25:59
Speaker 1: up the great work. I hope to keep listening to
26:01
Speaker 1: the podcast and that one day we will hear Jerry
26:04
Speaker 1: speak together. We will find a way. Your podcast confused
26:07
Speaker 1: my friends with amazing knowledge and make me sound like
26:10
Speaker 1: the smartest kid in sixth grade, and for that, I
26:12
Speaker 1: thank you you'r s y s K super fan Matthew
26:15
Speaker 1: from New York PS, what kind of music do you
26:18
Speaker 1: guys like? I like Pink, Floyd Hue, listened the News
26:21
Speaker 1: and weird Al Yankovic. So there's non Newtonian fluids for you.
26:26
Speaker 1: And dude, when you came to me and said, hey,
26:29
Speaker 1: are you cool with us reading this kid's thing to
26:30
Speaker 1: describe this? I went yeah, because you know what that means.
26:34
Speaker 1: I don't have to do it. He saved me. Yeah,
26:37
Speaker 1: he did know. He saved both of us. Funny our
26:39
Speaker 1: favorite little U Blake, New York. Basically, the non Newtonium fluid,
26:44
Speaker 1: as as Matthew points out, is basically acts like a
26:47
Speaker 1: solid and a liquid all at once. So he was
26:49
Speaker 1: right way back. Hodgson was way back in the day
26:52
Speaker 1: correct when he said it was a liquid solid or
26:54
Speaker 1: a solid liquid exactly. Um. The reason Why is because
26:59
Speaker 1: it's main ingredient is polydime methyl si ox sane, right,
27:04
Speaker 1: and that means that's what gives silly putty. It's fisco
27:07
Speaker 1: Alaska fisco elastic properties. So it changes depending on long
27:13
Speaker 1: flow time meanings, say the force of gravity acting on
27:16
Speaker 1: it down a bookcase um and temperatures. Right, So a
27:20
Speaker 1: long flow time a high temperature, it behaves like a
27:23
Speaker 1: highly viscus fluid. It will just kind of slowly flow,
27:28
Speaker 1: but at lower temperatures and when um the when when
27:31
Speaker 1: it has short flow times high pressure is applied really quickly,
27:36
Speaker 1: it will just break, which is why you can snap it.
27:38
Speaker 1: I wonder, I guess if you heat it up, does
27:40
Speaker 1: it become liquid? If you heat it up, it becomes radioactive.
27:43
Speaker 1: It's like super Happy fun Ball. Okay, remember that you
27:47
Speaker 1: don't the same live commercial for super Happy Funball. It's
27:50
Speaker 1: just like a regular ball. But there are all these
27:52
Speaker 1: warrings like do not stand directly at super happy fun Ball.
27:55
Speaker 1: It's super happy Funball begins to smoke, run away. You
27:59
Speaker 1: gotta look it up. I'll find it for you. We remember,
28:01
Speaker 1: we fought for that. For the title of our audiobooks
28:03
Speaker 1: was like the super happy fun guy to what you know,
28:06
Speaker 1: happiness or whatever. I think awesome was in there somewhere
28:08
Speaker 1: and they said, now, yeah, simplified. Um, So that's it.
28:13
Speaker 1: That's the science of silly putty. But let's say, Chuck,
28:16
Speaker 1: you don't have much money, you're down on your luck
28:20
Speaker 1: in this economy. It happens you still want some silly putty.
28:26
Speaker 1: What do you do? You make it? Dude, You can
28:29
Speaker 1: very easily make your own. I don't know this here,
28:31
Speaker 1: you do, okay? Because I don't have this. I know
28:33
Speaker 1: that there's probably some sort of Borax involved. There is
28:37
Speaker 1: bo x involved, or you can use corn starts for this.
28:39
Speaker 1: I'm gonna use boor x because I think we should
28:41
Speaker 1: support our friends at twenty mule team bore Ax hundred
28:47
Speaker 1: something years. And by the way, kids, Uh, even though
28:50
Speaker 1: this is a safe thing, you should always get your
28:52
Speaker 1: parents to help you when you're making stuff like this,
28:54
Speaker 1: because you might just make a big mess and then
28:56
Speaker 1: they would be mad at us and take away your iPod.
28:59
Speaker 1: It's exactly right. We don't want that. Uh. There was
29:02
Speaker 1: I was listening to an old episode and there was
29:04
Speaker 1: one about a kid who wrote in and said that
29:07
Speaker 1: we had um we've gotten his iPod taken away because
29:10
Speaker 1: his teacher he asked her about alien hand syndrome, and um,
29:15
Speaker 1: his teacher couldn't answer. So she took his iPod and
29:17
Speaker 1: said it was a utensil for cheating. And he said,
29:20
Speaker 1: for the record, I never used my iPods a utensil
29:23
Speaker 1: for cheating, basically smoked her. She was embarrassed. So, um,
29:28
Speaker 1: if you wanted to go ahead and gather these things. Um,
29:30
Speaker 1: there's a white craft glue, Elmer's glue will work. Um
29:34
Speaker 1: any bor X twenty mule team Borax works very well. Uh.
29:37
Speaker 1: Some warm water and food coloring if you like, and
29:40
Speaker 1: we'll we'll wait here while you gather thus, okay Um.
29:46
Speaker 1: So you want to take your white craft glue, you
29:48
Speaker 1: want one cup of it sixteen ounces eight ounces sorry, right,
29:53
Speaker 1: okay um, which I think is the standard size of
29:57
Speaker 1: just a regular thing of Elmer's glue. You take your
30:00
Speaker 1: three quarters cut warm water, and you make a nice
30:03
Speaker 1: glue water mixture, and you're gonna find that the glue
30:07
Speaker 1: dissolves pretty readily in the warm water, chuck and which
30:11
Speaker 1: means it has a very low viscosity. Then you take
30:14
Speaker 1: your borax, just a half of a teaspoon. I've also
30:17
Speaker 1: seen up to a teaspoon one of those two slowly added,
30:22
Speaker 1: and you're gonna find very quickly that the viscosity increases dramatically. Okay,
30:27
Speaker 1: um after a little while when you're stirring it, you're
30:30
Speaker 1: eventually gonna have to get it to the point where
30:32
Speaker 1: you just pull it out and you rub it together
30:33
Speaker 1: with your hands or whatever. And um oh, when you
30:36
Speaker 1: add the borax, you also want to add the food
30:38
Speaker 1: coloring to if not yours have white silly putty. Um,
30:42
Speaker 1: but you roll around in your hands, there's your silly putty.
30:46
Speaker 1: It's done. And what happened was your the polymer chains,
30:50
Speaker 1: the molecular chains of water and the glue weren't sticking.
30:54
Speaker 1: They just slid right past each other, which kept them
30:57
Speaker 1: in the Newtonian fluid category. Or but the moment you
31:01
Speaker 1: out of that borax, it came in and said, hey,
31:04
Speaker 1: let's all just band together. And it took these polymer
31:06
Speaker 1: chains and linked them so they could no longer slide
31:08
Speaker 1: past one another. They were turned into a net or web,
31:13
Speaker 1: and that's what gives the putty it's elastic like qualities,
31:15
Speaker 1: and these long polymer chains it just hook up and
31:17
Speaker 1: hook up and hook up. How long does that stuff last?
31:19
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think humanity has been around long
31:23
Speaker 1: enough to know how long silly putty will last? I mean,
31:26
Speaker 1: how made silly putty? I don't know until your little
31:28
Speaker 1: brother eat it? Because I thought I saw something about
31:30
Speaker 1: putting it in the fridge. You can store in a
31:34
Speaker 1: receivable bag or container to keep soft. Well, that nice.
31:39
Speaker 1: So that's it. And does it does it copy print
31:41
Speaker 1: the same way? I wonder, or just have the same
31:43
Speaker 1: elastic properties? I don't know, don't. Let's do it all right, Okay,
31:48
Speaker 1: that's hey, that's what we're doing this weekend. Okay, weekend.
31:52
Speaker 1: I'll bring the apron sweet to bring the beer. So
31:55
Speaker 1: that's it. I would say that this UM this podcast
31:58
Speaker 1: was a quintessential um Stuff you should Know podcast. It
32:01
Speaker 1: had an iconic American product. They had a lot of history,
32:07
Speaker 1: It had science, the the the chemistry behind it, and
32:11
Speaker 1: it had do do it yourself at home recipes. The
32:15
Speaker 1: four tenants and a kid and a cute kid. Five pillars,
32:20
Speaker 1: five pillars, We we nailed this one. And a cocktail
32:22
Speaker 1: party six pillars. That's it, all right, Go get you
32:26
Speaker 1: some silly putty. I know they had. I think for
32:29
Speaker 1: their anniversary they had gold silly putty for the first
32:32
Speaker 1: time ever. Believe I remember that. And I think they
32:34
Speaker 1: now have things like glowing the dark and you know
32:37
Speaker 1: it gets all wacky. It used to just look like, uh,
32:40
Speaker 1: I guess, pinkish, but sort of a fleshy pinkish. Remember that. Yeah, Um,
32:45
Speaker 1: I think they still have that too, though the original.
32:47
Speaker 1: They've got to You can't. You can't forget your roots
32:50
Speaker 1: like that. So dads can go to the toy store
32:52
Speaker 1: and say, nah, you're not getting glow in the dark.
32:54
Speaker 1: You're getting this, You're getting pink. That's what I had
32:56
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and I loved it. You're
32:58
Speaker 1: gonna love it too. Let's get some comics wherever they
33:00
Speaker 1: sell those and press it against their online all right,
33:04
Speaker 1: all right, So if you want to learn more about
33:06
Speaker 1: silly putty type and silly putty, it brings up a
33:08
Speaker 1: really cool article, um, including a recipe, an extended recipe
33:12
Speaker 1: even um. So that's s I L L Y Space
33:15
Speaker 1: p U T T Y and in the search bar
33:19
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. Since I said search bar,
33:21
Speaker 1: that means it's time for a listener mail the second
33:24
Speaker 1: one in this podcast. Indeed, Josh, I'm gonna call this
33:30
Speaker 1: smart stuff from a lady in Columbia, South Carolina. You know,
33:34
Speaker 1: sometimes we just get these listeners that just send us
33:37
Speaker 1: really good, intelligent emails, and I think those are always
33:40
Speaker 1: worth reading. So here we go. Hey, guys, just finished
33:44
Speaker 1: listening to the Future of the Internet cast had a
33:46
Speaker 1: few thoughts about the so called dumbing down of culture. First,
33:49
Speaker 1: I'm highly skeptical of any claims that uh to assert
33:53
Speaker 1: a sea change in intellectual ability. Smart and dumb are
33:57
Speaker 1: culturally and historically relative terms, and it's also true that
34:01
Speaker 1: people have been bemoaning the intellectual poverty caused by new
34:05
Speaker 1: technologies ever since writing was invented. Secondly, I'm not actually
34:08
Speaker 1: sure the utilization of deep memory a good is a
34:12
Speaker 1: good one in and of itself. Yeah, something might be
34:15
Speaker 1: lost with those ah ha moments, but I'm much more
34:17
Speaker 1: impressed by someone's ability to make novel and surprising connections,
34:22
Speaker 1: something that the Internet actually facilitates, than by the pedantic
34:25
Speaker 1: memorization of facts, which I would argue wasn't pedantic, but
34:30
Speaker 1: that's me. Third, and most personally, the ability of the
34:33
Speaker 1: Internet to store and offer up vast quantities of information
34:36
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily wipe out sustained research or thought. I'm finishing
34:40
Speaker 1: up a dissertation that I could have, uh couldn't have
34:43
Speaker 1: written without Google Books, and that would have taken me
34:46
Speaker 1: a lot longer without Google scholar. Yeah, sometimes I find
34:49
Speaker 1: myself lost and then indefinitely I'm sorry, infinitely expanding more
34:54
Speaker 1: ass of tabs as I disappeared down some research rabbit hole.
34:58
Speaker 1: This guy is obvious putting off working on this dissertation
35:02
Speaker 1: by writing this email. It's a lady, but that's always
35:05
Speaker 1: been the nature of scholarship. You never know where a
35:07
Speaker 1: question will take you, and the ability to quickly pursue
35:11
Speaker 1: various strands and to figure out which ones aren't going
35:13
Speaker 1: to take you anywhere productive is I think transformative for academia.
35:17
Speaker 1: All of this to say, the Internet might diminish our
35:20
Speaker 1: ability to store quantities of facts, but mourning that ability
35:23
Speaker 1: privileges facts and quantities effects are not necessarily indicative of
35:27
Speaker 1: a culture's intelligence. Sustained reasoning and interpretation is, of course
35:31
Speaker 1: something else entirely, and that is from Josephine Are of Columbia,
35:35
Speaker 1: South Carolina via Los Angeles. So wait, she's I think
35:42
Speaker 1: currently in Colombia from l A. No, no no, no, from
35:46
Speaker 1: l A via Columbia. Nope, she's in l A FROMA.
35:50
Speaker 1: You are right now, man? How funny this follow up
35:54
Speaker 1: a smart email like that, dumbrie like demitery. All right,
36:00
Speaker 1: that's it. Thank you Josephine for that. We appreciate it.
36:04
Speaker 1: That was actually kind of a big topic of UM
36:07
Speaker 1: dissent people writing in about that after that podcast. But thanks.
36:12
Speaker 1: I think she summed it up pretty well. Agreed. Um. Also,
36:15
Speaker 1: we should correct ourselves Cheddar American cheese no English after
36:22
Speaker 1: the English town of Cheddar, So sorry about that, England,
36:25
Speaker 1: thanks for taking away one of our American cheeses. I
36:29
Speaker 1: can't think of any more corrections right now, but we
36:32
Speaker 1: will figure them out, Yes we will. If you want
36:34
Speaker 1: to send us a correction, we're always open to that.
36:37
Speaker 1: You can also send us any cute, silly putty stories
36:39
Speaker 1: that you've got, um let us hear them. You can
36:42
Speaker 1: tweet to us s y s K podcast. You can
36:46
Speaker 1: um go on to Facebook dot com slash stuff you
36:48
Speaker 1: should know, that's our fan page, or you can send
36:51
Speaker 1: us an old email at Stuff podcast at how stuff
36:55
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
37:03
Speaker 1: other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com.