Silly Putty

A steel ball sinks slowly into Silly Putty over the course of a lecture, modeling Earth's mantle — solid on short timescales (seismic waves propagate through it) but fluid on …

Demonstrates spaghettification — the stretching of objects by tidal forces near a black hole. Students see how differential gravity across an extended body produces elongation along the radial direction and …

Demonstrates rate-dependent mechanical response: Silly Putty flows when pressed slowly but shatters when struck with a hammer. Students see that a material's behavior as "solid" or "liquid" depends on the …