Mrs Woolley (Biology Teacher)

On Wednesday, our Junior Science Club embraced Halloween and decided to have a go at making witches brew slime – a mixture of cornflour, water and food colouring.

The slime making process involved adding dyed water to the cornflour mixture slowly. Too much water and your slime turns to slop! This was the first time that some of the girls had studied a non-Newtonian fluid– a liquid that is also a solid. If we throw a rock into a pond, the water will splash everywhere as it does with most liquids. However, some liquids can act very differently and this can depend on the degree of force applied to them. Such liquids are known as non-Newtonian fluids, which demonstrate some unusual properties, cornflour slime is one of these.

The girls worked in pairs to carefully create their slime and discussed how and why it behaved in the way that it does when you stir the mixture slowly and what differences we observe when you add a sudden stress such as rolling it. There were some brilliant discussions occurring, carefully aided and directed by our Sixth Form helpers. Next week we are investigating how temperature affects the rate of diffusion in the food colouring of Skittles.

View photos of the experiments here.