Non-Newtonian Day

Ok, I am purposely not talking about work today. Mostly because I am tired of always focusing on that part of my life and it was a pretty downer day. So, instead I am going to talk about something I saw on TV this week that has been stuck in my head. There is a show on Discovery called TimeWarp. My parents got me interested...basically it is two guys who use high speed cameras to capture things happening...some everyday things, some strange off the wall things. That is the basic idea...anyway, this week part of the show was devoted to "walking on water." (the other totally cool thing was that they showed how a hummingbird holds it's head steady while feeding...you'll never guess....it uses the nectar in its crop as a counter balance to it's wing beats...cool, huh?). What they started playing with was a mixture of cornstarch and water that falls into the classification of a Non-Newtonian fluid. Meaning that it doesn't follow the Newtonian law of viscosity (I don't know the "real" law, but that is my understanding of it....Newtonian Physics is not my forte). SO, while it appears to be a liquid, under the right circumstances it will react as if it is a solid. For example, if you gently push your hand into it, it acts like a fluid and will take your hand in, but if you punch it, it resists your hand and acts like a springy gel like solid. The coolest demo on the show was a high speed film slowed down of a guy scratching the surface of the cornstarch/water mix. As soon as it gets scratched it curls up as if one were scratching soft-ish wax and then immediately "softens" and turns back into a liquid. Pretty crazy! They also did a demo of "walking on water" using the cornstarch/water mix. As long as they "punched" their footsteps they were able to stay on the surface, but as soon as they slowed down, they would fall in to the liquid. I am sure there are some cool videos out there on the web somewhere to demo this (Neatorama had one a while back of cornstarch/water on a speaker, pretty strange) and it is quite possible that Discovery.com has a show link with some info. Anyway, it has gotten me thinking about whether or not there is any sort of real-world application for this (bullet proof-ish vests, or something like car bumpers) and what actually makes this specific mix ( I am sure there is a very specific proportion of cornstarch to water) behave this way. More to think about and learn, as they say on Discovery..."The world is just awesome"...boom-di-ada-boom-di-ada!