Who invented silly putty?
Answer:
The history of silly putty is quite amusing. In 1943 James Wright, an engineer, was attempting to create a synthetic rubber. He was unable to achieve the properties he was looking for and put his creation (later to be called silly putty) on the shelf as a failure. A few years later, a salesman for the Dow Corning Corporation was using the putty to entertain some customers. One of his customers became intrigued with the putty and saw that it had potential as a new toy. In 1957, after being endorsed on the "Howdy Doody Show", silly putty became a toy fad. Recently new uses such as a grip strengthener and as an art medium have been developed. Silly putt even went into space on the Apollo 8 mission.
The polymers in silly putty have covalent bonds within the molecules, but hydrogen bonds between the molecules. The hydrogen bonds are easily broken. When small amounts of stress are slowly applied to the putty, only a few bonds are broken and the putty "flows". When larger amounts of stress are applied quickly, there are many hydrogen bonds that break, causing the putty to break or tear...
James Wright, of the General Electric company
Silly Putty (originally called nutty putty, and also known as Potty Putty) is a silicone plastic clay, marketed as a toy for children by Jeffrey Lyons Inc. It was originally created as a scientific accident on the way to solving another problem: finding a rubber substitute for use by the United States during World War II.
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Silly Putty is sold as a 0.47 oz (13 g) piece of plastic clay inside an egg-shaped plastic container. It is an example of an inorganic polymer, noted for its many unusual characteristics. When pressed on comics pages or other newspaper media, the loose ink transfers to the Silly Putty, which can then be stretched out, a source of amusement for many children. It bounces, revealing its rubber roots, it breaks when given a sharp blow, it can flow like a liquid when it is slowly stretched, and will melt into a puddle over a long enough period of time. Much like concrete, when shaped a certain way, it floats, when shaped another way, it sinks.
Silly Putty is composed of: 65% Dimethyl Siloxane (hydroxy-terminated polymers with boric acid), 17% Silica, quartz crystalline, 9% Thixotrol ST, 4% Polydimethylsiloxane, 1% Decamethyl cyclopentasiloxane, 1% Glycerine, and 1% Titanium Dioxide.
These unusual flow characteristics occur because Silly Putty is primarily composed of the polymer known as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a viscoelastic liquid. Viscoelasticity is a type of non-Newtonian flow, characterizing material that acts as a viscous liquid over a long time period but as an elastic solid over a short time period. Silly Putty has sometimes been characterized as a dilatant fluid. However, according to the science of rheology, this is not strictly correct and it is more accurate to characterize it as a viscoelastic liquid or thixotropic.
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