The Student Room Group
Reply 1
panjabiflower
Hi,
could anyone tell me why SLIME has the properties of both a liquid and a solid?

Thanks


slime is a liquid essentially, but it tends to have a long relaxation time. Relaxation time is defined as the time taken for a molecule to escape from the surrounding solvent cage and take on liquid like behaviour.

for liquids, mostly, relaxation time is so short in range of pico to nano seconds, but for slime, the relaxation time is in seconds, so it tends to be more viscous, meaning more solid like behaviour, but when you leave it for minutes, then the liquid properties appear again.
Reply 2
Google "non-Newtonian fluid". There's some good videos on YouTube (Braniac in particular) showing how custard - or cornflour/water mixtures in general - have these properties.

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