Things you can do with cornflour

Some You Tube videos of cornflour have been doing the rounds and they're quite fascinating to watch.

You might think cornflour is only good for thickening sauces or making cornbread (yumm). Well you'd be wrong.

You can try running on it...



Or you can pop it on an upturned bass speaker and play it some music!...



So what's going on? Why is cornstarch so goofy and weird?

It's something called non-newtonian behaviour. Slow, gentle movements meet little resistance to flow; but sudden, forceful motion causes the matrix to lock up and resistance becomes much, much stronger. If you want to know more, read the Wikipedia articles on cornstarch and non-newtonian fluid.

Oh, and don't forget to enjoy the videos :-)