Oobleck

This week, chemistry students are learning about the states of matter. We know that there are three states of matter—solid, liquid, and gas. However, what happens when something doesn’t fit nicely into one of those 3 options? To explore this, the students made oobleck, a substance that’s sort-of-a solid, but sort-of-a liquid too.


We tried out two recipes to see what would work better.

Recipe 1: 2 tsp water, 2 tbs glue, 2 tbs borax, and food coloring

Recipe 2: 1 cup water, 1 ½ cups cornstarch, and food coloring

As a class, we had lots of fun playing with the oobleck and learned that this is a “non Newtonian fluid” because it has variable viscosity. We then discussed the difference between compounds and mixtures and the differences between chemical change and physical change.

We will fondly remember playing with oobleck as we examine more properties of matter and change this year in chemistry!

~Alexandra Sloane
Science Instructor