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A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid that does not follow Newton's law of viscosity, i.e., constant viscosity independent of stress. In non-Newtonian fluids, viscosity can change when under force to either more liquid or more solid. Ketchup, for example, becomes runnier when shaken and is thus a non-Newtonian fluid. Many salt solutions and molten polymers are non-Newtonian fluids, as are many commonly found substances such as custard, toothpaste, starch suspensions, corn starch, paint, blood, melted butter, and shampoo.
A wetsuit is a garment worn to provide thermal protection while wet. It is usually made of foamed neoprene, and is worn by surfers, divers, windsurfers, canoeists, and others engaged in water sports and other activities in or on water, primarily providing thermal insulation, but also buoyancy and protection from abrasion, ultraviolet exposure and stings from marine organisms. The insulation properties of neoprene foam depend mainly on bubbles of gas enclosed within the material, which reduce its ability to conduct heat. The bubbles also give the wetsuit a low density, providing buoyancy in water.
In physics and materials science, plasticity, also known as plastic deformation, is the ability of a solid material to undergo permanent deformation, a non-reversible change of shape in response to applied forces. For example, a solid piece of metal being bent or pounded into a new shape displays plasticity as permanent changes occur within the material itself. In engineering, the transition from elastic behavior to plastic behavior is known as yielding.
Foam is an object formed by trapping pockets of gas in a liquid or solid.
A soap bubble is an extremely thin film of soapy water enclosing air that forms a hollow sphere with an iridescent surface. Soap bubbles usually last for only a few seconds before bursting, either on their own or on contact with another object. They are often used for children's enjoyment, but they are also used in artistic performances. Assembling several bubbles results in foam.
Soft matter or soft condensed matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical systems that are deformed or structurally altered by thermal or mechanical stress of the magnitude of thermal fluctuations. They include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, liquid crystals, pillows, flesh, and a number of biological materials. These materials share an important common feature in that predominant physical behaviors occur at an energy scale comparable with room temperature thermal energy. At these temperatures, quantum aspects are generally unimportant. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who has been called the "founding father of soft matter," received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1991 for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to the more complex cases found in soft matter, in particular, to the behaviors of liquid crystals and polymers.
A granular material is a conglomeration of discrete solid, macroscopic particles characterized by a loss of energy whenever the particles interact. The constituents that compose granular material are large enough such that they are not subject to thermal motion fluctuations. Thus, the lower size limit for grains in granular material is about 1 μm. On the upper size limit, the physics of granular materials may be applied to ice floes where the individual grains are icebergs and to asteroid belts of the Solar System with individual grains being asteroids.
In physics, a paste is a substance that behaves as a solid until a sufficiently large load or stress is applied, at which point it flows like a fluid. In rheological terms, a paste is an example of a Bingham plastic fluid.
Complex fluids are mixtures that have a coexistence between two phases: solid–liquid, solid–gas (granular), liquid–gas (foams) or liquid–liquid (emulsions). They exhibit unusual mechanical responses to applied stress or strain due to the geometrical constraints that the phase coexistence imposes. The mechanical response includes transitions between solid-like and fluid-like behavior as well as fluctuations. Their mechanical properties can be attributed to characteristics such as high disorder, caging, and clustering on multiple length scales.
In mechanics, an impact is a high force or shock applied over a short time period when two or more bodies collide. Such a force or acceleration usually has a greater effect than a lower force applied over a proportionally longer period. The effect depends critically on the relative velocity of the bodies to one another.
A bubble bath is a filled bathtub with a layer of surfactant foam on the surface of the water and consequently also the surfactant product used to produce the foam or soap. Less commonly, aerated or carbonated baths are called bubble baths.
A wire saw is a saw that uses a metal wire or cable for cutting. Industrial wire saws are usually powered. There are also hand-powered survivalist wire saws suitable for cutting branches. Wire saws are classified as continuous or oscillating. Sometimes the wire itself is referred to as a "blade".
Foam latex or latex foam rubber is a lightweight form of latex containing bubbles known as cells, created from liquid latex. The foam is generally created though the Dunlop or Talalay process in which a liquid latex is foamed and then cured in a mold to extract the foam.
A bubble is a globule of one substance in another, usually gas in a liquid. Due to the Marangoni effect, bubbles may remain intact when they reach the surface of the immersive substance.
A material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified based on their physical and chemical properties, or on their geological origin or biological function. Materials science is the study of materials and their applications.
Ceramic foam is a tough foam made from ceramics. Manufacturing techniques include impregnating open-cell polymer foams internally with ceramic slurry and then firing in a kiln, leaving only ceramic material. The foams may consist of several ceramic materials such as aluminium oxide, a common high-temperature ceramic, and gets insulating properties from the many tiny air-filled voids within the material.
Package cushioning is used to protect items during shipment. Vibration and impact shock during shipment and loading/unloading are controlled by cushioning to reduce the chance of product damage.
Jamming is the physical process by which the viscosity of some mesoscopic materials, such as granular materials, glasses, foams, polymers, emulsions, and other complex fluids, increases with increasing particle density. The jamming transition has been proposed as a new type of phase transition, with similarities to a glass transition but very different from the formation of crystalline solids.
A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter, and is the only state with a definite volume but no fixed shape. A liquid is made up of tiny vibrating particles of matter, such as atoms, held together by intermolecular bonds. Like a gas, a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container. Most liquids resist compression, although others can be compressed. Unlike a gas, a liquid does not disperse to fill every space of a container, and maintains a fairly constant density. A distinctive property of the liquid state is surface tension, leading to wetting phenomena. Water is, by far, the most common liquid on Earth.
A powder is a dry, bulk solid composed of many very fine particles that may flow freely when shaken or tilted. Powders are a special sub-class of granular materials, although the terms powder and granular are sometimes used to distinguish separate classes of material. In particular, powders refer to those granular materials that have the finer grain sizes, and that therefore have a greater tendency to form clumps when flowing. Granulars refers to the coarser granular materials that do not tend to form clumps except when wet.
References
- Cates, Michael (2000). Soft and Fragile Matter. CRC Press. ISBN 0-7503-0724-2.