They say necessity is the mother of invention , and for Silly Putty , the strange material that ship in an egg and behaves sometimes like a liquidity and other times like a solid , necessity total in the form of Imperial Japan . In the early 1940s , as Germany waged war in Europe , the Empire of the Sun invadedrubber - producing countries such as Thailand , Malaysia and the Philippines , cutting off supplies to the West . This was more than a minor upshot . For every U.S. soldier that pass into conflict , the military needed 32 Irish pound ( nearly 15 kg ) of rubber – for boots , tires , clothing and other equipment [ seed : American Chemical Society ] . Japan ’s invasion of Southeast Asia peril , literally , the entire war effort .
At a red , the U.S. War Production Board take exception industrial labs and donnish psychiatric hospital to develop a man-made rubber that could be used to meet wartime production demands . jointly , the chemists working on the trouble may have achieved one of the dandy successes in the history of scientific discipline : They produced a general - use synthetical golosh known asGR - S , orgovernment India rubber - styrene , in sufficient quantity to meet the needs of the U.S. and its allies during World War II .
separately , there were a few reversal and wrong turns in the quest for man-made arctic . One of those wrong bend was made by James Wright in the lab of General Electric . Wright flux boric acid and silicone polymer oil together in the hopes of create rubber that would make Charles Goodyear proud . Instead , he created a substance he would eventually call " bounce putty " [ source : Crayola ] . General Electric direct Wright ’s mixture to applied scientist all over the world , skip to make something awesome out of the stroke . regrettably , no one ever bring out a practical employment for the " bouncing putty , " which seemed destined to wither restfully into story .
One Isle of Man , however , rescued the content from abstruseness . His name was Peter Hodgson , and his vision would eventually lead toSilly Putty , one of the most famoustoysin the history of playfulness and games . In this clause , we ’ll look at the foresightful , foreign journeying of Silly Putty . We ’ll also enquire the cloth ’s many odd properties – and the chemical science behind them .
Our first order of business : Hodgson ’s dandy gamble .
Silly Putty History
The year was 1949 . World War II had been over for four years , and James Wright ’s bouncing putty was still in circulation as an invention in search of a practical economic consumption . regrettably , no mill or manufacture plant ever discovered an app for the goop . Peter Hodgson , who owned his own advertizement agency in New Haven , Conn. , was at a cocktail party when he spotted the putty make the round . He watched as mass spend minutes at atimefolding , stretching and squeezing the strange stuff . He approached Ruth Fallgatter , possessor of the Block Shoptoystore , about heel the putty in an upcoming catalogue Hodgson was helping to bring forth . Fallgatter agree , and the two decided to list it on a page with other adult gift for the damage of $ 1 [ source : Miller ] .
The bouncing putty became one of the Block Shop ’s biggest Peter Sellers . For reasons that remain unreadable , Fallgatter decline to market the product any further , but Hodgson saw its potential difference . He take up $ 147 to say another good deal from General Electric , then hired a Yale student to identify 1 - ounce ( 28 - gramme ) mass in plastic eggs . At the same clip , Hodgson begin to brainstorm gens for his mathematical product . He valuate 15 hypothesis , but eventually settled on Silly Putty , for which he secure a stylemark . Next , he established Arnold Clark Inc. to sell the material and sign with some chemical substance engineers in Schenectady , N.Y. , to derive a formula based on General Electric ’s original formula . Hodgson open a manufacturing plant in North Branford , Conn. , to make Silly Putty and , shortly after , landed his first customers – Neiman Marcus and the Doubleday bookstall [ source : Crayola ] .
Then , in August 1950 , The New Yorker featured Silly Putty in its Talk of the Town section :
With that imprimatur in The New Yorker , interest in Silly Putty skyrocketed . Arnold Clark received more than a quarter - million order in three days , and Hodgson ’s capital gamble had paid off . The lenient , tractile material soon became a fixture in homes across North America and eventually – the world . When Hodgson passed away in 1976 , Silly Putty was being sold throughout the United States and 22 other land , with annual sale exceed $ 5 million [ germ : Haynes , McFadden ] .
Today , Silly Putty continues to disport and harbour . Up next , we ’ll take a closer look at its unusual properties and how they can lead to a contradiction in term .
Silly Putty Properties
The original Silly Putty did n’t look very exciting . It go far in an egg and fall out of its shell like a pink blob . The orchis had no implication except that Peter Hodgson begin sell his intersection in the weeks leading up to theEasterholiday . It even came deliver in XII - pack cardboard egg cartons . But the eggs quickly became part of Silly Putty ’s brand , and Hodgson decide to keep the unique packaging long after the first Easter selling time of year had come and give-up the ghost .
When you withdraw the putty from the egg and began to deal it , you saw its peculiar properties immediately : It stretched like taffy , yet stop into bit if you struck it precipitously . You could take form it into shapes , likePlay - Doh , but unlike its mould - compound cousin , which held a pose indefinitely , Silly Putty flow in slow motion . pose it on the side of a filing locker , for instance , and it would run down the side slowly , taking weeks – even months – to answer togravity ’s down pull . pluck it into a ball and throw it at the ground , and it would bounce 25 percent higher thanrubber[source : National Toy Hall of Fame ] .
In early merchandising drive , Hodgson sum up up Silly Putty ’s enigmatic properties by distinguish the cloth as a " hearty liquid " [ source : Crayola ] . Interestingly , he did n’t think these qualities would attract Thomas Kyd . In fact , Hodgson saw his merchandise as a purely grownup diversion .
" It means five minutes of escape from neurosis , " he said in the 1950 article for The New Yorker . " It means not have to worry about Korea or family difficulties . And it appeal to hoi polloi of superior intellect ; the constitutional absurdness of the material acts as an emotional release to firmly - pressed adults . "
The official patent document echoed this sentiment by proposing the following practical uses : relievingstressby enabling patient in motive of helping hand therapy to squeeze and manipulate the putty ; get impressions of newsprint to relieve tedium ; cleaning typewriter tonality ; blocking low-down - frequency sound and seal vacuum joints .
It did n’t take long for kids to see what adults were playing with and to cabbage some covert samples . And luckily for everyone , one of Silly Putty ’s other belongings – nontoxicity – mean that no one had to concern about accidental poisoning . By 1955 , the market flip , and Silly Putty sales to kid overtook sales to adult [ source : Crayola ] . Eventually , chemistry teachers began to take posting and begin teach the science of Silly Putty . We ’ll cover some of that science in the next section .
The Science of Silly Putty
To understand how Silly Putty mould , you have to take a diva into the construct offluid interpersonal chemistry . You probably think of water when you try the word fluid , but to chemists and physicists , afluidis any substance that has no fixed shape and issue well to extraneous pressure . By this definition , accelerator can be fluids , as can certain solid - eccentric material .
A key property of fluid is something known asviscosity , which measures how much a smooth resists fall at a sure temperature . Molten glass , for instance , has a high viscosity , or immunity to flow . Other gluey materials includehoney , molasses andengine petroleum . urine , on the other hand , has a humbled viscousness . Here are their viscosities at temperature of 68 degrees F ( 20 degrees ampere-second ) . Note that the mensuration are give inpascal seconds , the standard unit of viscosity in the International System of Units .
As you know from experience , viscosity vary with temperature . It ’s why honey and syrup current more easy when heated and why railway locomotive oils and hydraulic fluid perform ill on really cold-blooded twenty-four hours . This is dependable for most fluids – their viscousness bet only on temperature . chemist classify such fabric asNewtonian fluidsin laurels ofIsaac Newton , who pictured a fluid as a serial of stratum slide past each other and reason that viscousness is the result of rubbing between these layers .
Silly Putty isnon - Newtonian fluid : Its viscosity count on both temperature and on the force applied to it . The classic example of such a fluid is Zea mays amylum result . When you meld water with corn whiskey starch , you get a material that feels like a slurred fluid when it ’s stirred slowly . Tap on it , though , and it feels like a dumb solid . Pour some of the corn starch mixture into your hand and roll it gently , and it will wield its orb pattern . discontinue wander it , and it forms a puddle in the laurel wreath of your hand . In other words , it act like a upstanding and a liquid all at once .
It seems Peter Hodgson was right when he described his conception as a " self-coloured liquid . " Unlike corn starch resolution , however , Silly Putty ’s solid nature resemble rubber , not rock candy . That ’s because its main fixings ispolydimethylsiloxane , a substantial withviscoelastic belongings . In other words , over long stream time or at high temperatures , Silly Putty behaves like a highly sticky fluid . But over scant menstruation times or at grim temperature , it behaves like an elastic upstanding .
You do n’t have to have a level in chemistry or a complex factory to make Silly Putty . A homemade version requires some readily uncommitted ingredient and just a few minutes of experiment . Your grade in kitchen chemistry start on the next varlet .
Homemade Silly Putty
instructor love Silly Putty because it incarnate the intent of hired man - on science – and because it offers a fun way of life to march howpolymers , or long chains of molecule repeated over and over again , work . But buying putty - filled eggs for an intact schoolroom can be cost - prohibitory . fortunately , it ’s not too arduous to whip up a little private label Silly Putty using ingredients you may retrieve around the menage or at the drugstore . The most common recipe uses the following :
No chemistry experiment is complete without some equipment . You ’ll need measuring spoons and a measuring cupful to get the right proportion for the mixture . You ’ll also need a large bowl , a small credit card cupful and a spoonful to mix factor together . You might also have a resealable formative bag or container on script if you want to store your homemade putty for a few day .
Once you have all of your supplies , you ’re ready to get silly . Just follow these footprint , and you ’ll be playing with putty in no fourth dimension :
This concoction will undoubtedly affect your friends , but they ’ll be even more impressed if they try you explain the chemical science . Here ’s what ’s encounter : Glue contains a polymer calledpolyvinyl alcohol , orPVA . In the glue - piddle mixture , these polymer mountain range slip and slide past each other easily . But when you add the borax solution to the mucilage , it unite one PVA molecule to another in a physical process known ascross - linking . As more chains connect up , they no longer luxate and slide . alternatively , they imprint a enceinte flatness that resembles a mesh or a spider ’s web . This is what gives the material its puttylike calibre .
Of course , nothing beats the original Silly Putty you’re able to buy at the toy dog storage . Snap up more link to Graeco-Roman toy tidbits next .
