Slow-Mo Non-Newtonian Fluid on a Speaker

Everyone has played with a mixture of corn starch and water (or at least I hope they have). This was one of my favorite experiments as a kid. Your hand slides into the slime easily when moving slowly but the mixture behaves as a solid if you hit it quickly. That is what is meant by 'non-Newtonian' - the fluid's properties change depending on its relative motion. These properties can be exploited to dramatic effect as has been shown on speaker cones before. Here I wanted to understand what is going on, what frequencies and amplitudes work best so I used a slow-mo camera.

Thanks to everyone at the YouTube Space LA for helping me film this. I couldn't have done it without you.

Love Lost (Instrumental) by Temper Trap
A Life in the Day by Ghost of Otis
Fortune's Fool Instrumental by Hiatus & Shura
The Man by Audio Android

[huntererer]

The transition from the elegant music and visual effect in slow motion to the awkward glob with the vibrating noise at normal speed was fantastic.

[dalimillazan]

Man, YT and its creators really improved unbelievably much, this video is proof

[keiyakins]

1:30 - Paint me like one of your french blobs of non-newtonian fluid

[kronologie]

Did anyone else see the blob giving us "the finger" at 3:07 ?

[blosh]

I think this could be improved by spraying NeverWet (super hydrophobic coating) on the speaker and removing the plastic wrap from this demo.

[PeteParraNG]

1:38 that was a smooth transition lol!

[ryuu]

Great music mixed into this one! You should definitely add more of that to Veritasium. Having a background track makes the information your providing feel much more impactful, and definitely helps me pay attention.

Feedback from a fan - bring more music, "pretty" cinematography like the high-speed stuff, and more focus on explanation of mechanics.

Awesome stuff man.

[DraperPeanut]

Such an awesome way to describe non-newtonian fluids!

[Manibe]

3:57 Who else started shaking arms as if in a show, as soon as it started to look like a show audience? No one? Just me? Ok...

[PatrykPonichtera]

Am i the only one who saw the non newtonian fluid give the middle finger at 3:06?

[Samisnotbritish]

I like the elegant transition between the slow-mo with the music and the normal speed with the sound :) it makes me giggle

[Fishtail]

The gracefulness of the flubber ends here. 3:20

[DawnfireGalinndan]

For the green corn starch solution, it looked like some poor man going through the stages of depression and eventually just jumping off the speaker to end it all.

[constracted]

3:43 This looks something like the probability distribution of an electron. Coincidence?

[SquashBox]

Thanks for not having the silly slow motion audio! Because this is a high quality video from a high quality man. And that's the Veritas :)

[petertatum]

bro that lil guy that starts throwing his arm up at 4:00 is too good

[dragoniangamer]

Notice how at 3:05 it looks like this:☝️or, the come here hand sign

[kwal]

Thank you for this question. You made me investigate for myself how this works, because I know that the salt balance in cells is a very closely managed system, and an abundance of salt should be malign to most complex lifeforms there, yet the sea is full with them. Look up Fish and Osmoregulation on Wikipedia. That got me a pretty good image.

[sebastiancooke]

Did anyone else see the awesome hand with the index finger pointing at 3:07-3:09? It was pretty realistic.

[roidroid]

This made me think a lot about active structures, like buildings that require a constant stream of energy to maintain their shape, if they lose power they literally fall over.
Or like what might be required to build space elevators.  Or even the "structural integrity field" that helps spacecraft stay together in startrek.
In this video you can see that each individal pulse of the subwoofer breaks and then reflows the strucuture of the blob, like a self-healing material.  I do wonder if you could build larger structures outof dilatent fluids like this - coupled with some kindof vibrators (ie: electronic quartz timers).  The advantage would be the material could self-heal, and by adjusting the vibration you can put it into a mode that allows it to be re-formed into other shapes - then adjust the vibration back and it will be re-locked into it's new shape.