Bizarre liquid jets explained - the Kaye effect

To jump to the puzzle solution go to:

Chaotic jets of shampoo form on impact with a surface due to it's shear thinning properties - known as the Kaye effect.

[SupaDanteX]

2 hours later, with some tweaking of variables, I'd noticed some very unusual behavior.
My wife, she kept yelling at me about something. Something about wasting money and shampoo. I didn't quite understand what she was talking about.
That shampoo downward viscous flow though, that was some serious business.

[MikeBSc]

is there shampoo all over the floor...."
"SCIENCE!!"

[JW-hhqg]

That beaded chain metaphor/visualization was so perfect.

[TheRumpletiltskin]

8:00 " So next time you notice something strange, dig a little deeper,


you might find something you can pour out of a beaker."

[edwardatnardellaca]

You can get a stable jet by pouring onto an inclined plane.

[eelcohoogendoorn]

I have a degree in fluid mechanics, and I had never seen or heard of this cool effect. I did guess shear thinning correctly; but its humbling that you can understand a subject pretty well at a reductionistic level, yet still be so utterly clueless in anticipating all the cool implications thereof. Anyway, subscribed!

[nienke]

Shear stress is not the only thing that can influence viscosity, for example ketchup is indeed shear thinning, but on top of that, it is also thixotropic, meaning that if it is subjected to a constant shear stress the viscosity will go down, if this has happened it will need to "recover" once the sheer stress is removed (hysteresis), whereas a non-thixotrophic shear thinning product will regain its viscosity instantly as soon as sheer decreases,
a third mechanism also found in ketchup is yield stress, which means that it needs a certain minimal amount of stress to even start moving (that's the reason why getting ketchup out of a glass bottle might at first be difficult, but it can start suddenly flowing and will keep flowing.
Furthermore, opposite to shear thinning there is shear thickening, which is that the viscosity increases as shear stress increases, which is much less common.
Opposite of thixotropic is rheopectic where the viscosity increases when it is subjected to constant shear stress.
If a product shows any of these properties or a combination thereof, then they're non-Newtonian fluids, and the vast majority of liquids actually show non-Newtonian behaviour of some sort, only few liquids, such as water, follow Newtonian behaviour.

[fleish]

What we do here is pour out... out... out... out...

[DestronGaming]

I love falling asleep to your vids! your voice is soothing, and science has always been one of my fav things to learn about. so the combo of the two is always a one-two punch to knock me out! Thanks for being such an amazing scientist and youtuber!

[adityasriram]

Absolutely loved the way this video was organized. First the discovery, then the experiment and the resulting explanation and the reasoning.

[yeeturmcbeetur]

“I’m the kind of person that gets easily distracted by side quests” I’ll never play an rpg with you.

[MrWorth]

I saw this happen few months ago when I refilled a soap container, but didn't have a camera that would actually focus on the action. So i had no way to science it without just standing in my kitchen pouring soap out

Thanks for figuring it out.

[teqqqie]

Steve, I've noticed the same effect while pouring liquid laundry detergent into the receptacle of my washing machine. It's specifically one of those machines with the shallow triangular receptacle in one corner, and the Kaye effect happens as the detergent hits the bottom of the shallow receptacle. I have been fascinated by it for years, especially because the frequency seems to change as the cup of detergent goes from a steady pour to long drips as it empties. Thanks for providing a name and explanation for this phenomenon! Love your stuff!

[Dreamscape]

"People associate viscosity with luxuriousness" - I didn't realize it until you pointed it out, but I definitely subscribe to that. My dog's shampoo is very non-viscous and I know I've been thinking of it as cheap-seeming.

Okay cool things I've noticed and subsequently spent way too much time distracted with (even though they're already well known and probably not many people would even consider them cool/weird):
1. Bending water with static (balloon, plastic ruler, whatever)
2. The not-quite-haphazard-seeming way the light ripples and travels through, leaving flakes of insubstantial ash in its wake, as the end of a stick burns if you can get it going without an actual flame blocking your vision (like with coals in a campfire, but smaller and closer to your face. The hard part is getting it burning right. I've only managed it a couple times, ever.)
3. The way you can stare at a repeated pattern and when you focus just right, at the wrong distance, your perspective shifts and suddenly it's like there's a large overlay of the pattern much closer to your face (I spent SO many shopping trips with my mom in the cart doing this with the shopping cart lattice as a child), it's the same thing that gets stereograms to work. This is probably the one I'm the most interested in to be honest. I'd love to learn more about why this works. I know it has to do with the angle of your eyes and where your visual focus is, but I don't actually understand how things line up to that effect.
4. The way your hand looks and feels if you place it on the surface of still water and sink it in very, very, very slowly. The prickly filmy...ness.
5. The way metal feels when you break it. Anything from twisting off bits of spiral notebook spiral, to bending a paper clip a few times, to tearing through thin aluminum wrappers from candy bars. It's so strange how it just, suddenly gives. One moment it feels infallible, even as it bends or twists it feels like you could do it forever without consequence and then suddenly it gives all at once, and if you stop just then it'll still be attached, just suddenly very very weak, any more pressure at all and it just falls right off - but it obviously doesn't feel like when something brittle gives either. Neat.
6. The way silly putty (or Gak, or Oobleck) is bendy and flowy and yielding but if you pull really really fast it snaps as if it's super brittle. That's just a non newtonian fluid though, I think.

Puzzle answer:
One Knight.
All three people have been called the Joker by someone else respectively, and one (only one) of them IS the Joker, so then ipso facto only one of them is telling the truth. If only one person is telling the Truth, there cannot be more than one Knight; Knights cannot lie. While the Joker COULD tell the truth, if there is only the one Joker (s)he would have to name themself in order to tell the truth. Since no one names themself, then the joker must be lying. This means the one person telling the truth is the only Knight, in addition to one Joker and one Knave. All this is regardless of which person is which in the puzzle. Assigning names is just to distract with extraneous information in this case.
Strangely, finding a way to explain that in the comment was a LOT more difficult than just following that logic to reach the answer in the first place xD

[cookeymonster]

Oh my gosh, you have given me an amazing defence from my partner's retorts when I get distracted: I'm not scatterbrained, I'm just side-questing!

[hernancoronel]

At 5:12 how you say "Luxuriousness" is hilarious!! Lol! Great video thank you!

[ccoker]

Steve, I love your videos. I study chaotic (such as Lorenz and Rossler) systems as part of my undergraduate research. The other day, I was boiling lentils and noticed that they exhibit chaotic behavior in when they decide to float or sink. I haven't been able to find any examples online about this. If you get the chance, I'd love to see some investigation into the cause. Thanks!

[Calebsbutt]

This is amazing. I was just starting some laundry and as I was pouring the detergent into the little detergent tray, it started to fly all over the place. I started contemplating what had happened, and then I found this video.

[cavangriffin]

love the fairy lights on the red pipe in the background

[rowangallagher]

Your wife must have so much patience. I kind of envy you.