WEBVTT - How Silly Putty Works 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.520 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works 0:00:04.559 --> 0:00:13.480 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:17.599 There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant uh with me as always 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.720 looking good. I am, yeah, thank you, Josh um that 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:24.959 makes this stuff you should know. And you were looking 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:28.120 good as well, sir. Set a new shirt. No I'm not. 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.159 It's I don't know, less than six months old. I 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:36.040 guess it's kind of new, all right. I'm trying to 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:38.120 think it was pouring way I could start a show 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.199 as you pretty high up there. Josh is wearing a 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:44.320 lovely stripe blue button up as he has one to do, 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:46.800 and I'm wearing a Everything is Bigger in Texas green 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.680 T shirt. We're both in jeans. I have on my 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:54.320 last chance garage hat. Yep, anything else I want to 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.279 I want to set the scene for once. I've got 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:01.920 a beard, now you've had a beard. I'm clean shaven, 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.559 clean shaven. Yeah, I've started to do the clean shaven 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:07.680 thing more than scruffy. I was doing scruffy for a while. 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:12.040 Are you which way do you like? Hope for you? Yeah, 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:14.840 I think whatever you mean likes, which is clearly not scruffy. 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:17.600 She likes it both ways. Oh yeah, yeah, all right, 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.200 that's that's that is the most boring way to ever 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.600 start a show. We should all go to sleep. Now 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:26.240 I've got a story for you, all right, all right, 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:28.679 and you know some of this so you don't have 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:33.479 to pretend like you're surprised. Back in eight thirty nine, 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.319 there is a man named Charles Goodyear, and Charles Goodyear 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.319 whose last name you might recognize for good reason, uh, 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:45.240 figured out a way to make rubber, natural rubber tougher 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:50.400 than leather. It's called vulcanization. Yes, okay, So this process 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:54.360 of vulcanization took rubber, which is naturally um kind of 0:01:54.400 --> 0:02:00.280 stickier gooey at warmer temperatures and um rigid at cooler temperatures, 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.000 and made it much more a pliable, much more, much 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.680 more flexible, but able to stand up to really punishing 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:10.520 conditions like heat, lots of pressure, and force, which made 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:15.800 it perfect for car tires, hoses, fan belts, all of 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.000 the stuff that we use rubber for today. This guy 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:21.760 is the reason we're able to write the reason that's 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:24.360 tough enough. Yes. Now, the fact that this came in 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:28.240 nine means that this innovation came during the Industrial Revolution, 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:31.079 which means that all that stuff that the rubber could 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:34.079 be used for could be mass produced, which means that 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:38.280 we needed a vast source of rubber as a raw 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:42.880 material for this vulcanization process. And luckily, I guess you 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:46.280 could say, at least for the Westerners, uh, we knew 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.480 where to get vast stores of rubber, the Amazon, which 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:52.200 is where this very specific type of rubber tree is 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:57.160 indigenous and is found in vast supply. Right, all right, 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.280 you're with me so far. So we went down on 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:01.720 the Amazon, and as a result, these parts of Brazil 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.080 that were just totally impoverished were suddenly suddenly found themselves 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:09.400 at the center of a global rubber boom and just 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:14.840 became decadently wealthy, like almost overnight. Brazil and the Amazon 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:17.600 was the center of this global trade and rubber for 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:23.760 decades until eighteen seventy six. These British guys snuck some 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:27.160 rubber tree seeds out of the Amazon and took them 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:31.919 to the botanical gardens in London, Okay, and they started 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.760 to work on forming a hybrid that was even better 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:37.120 than the ones in Brazil. A hybrid plant, a hybrid 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:41.720 rubber tree that could coincidentally thrive in British colonies in 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:46.680 Southeast Asia. Perfect, it was perfect for the British. By 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:51.400 nineteen ten, the Brazilian stranglehold on the rubber um trade 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.600 was being challenged and was in real trouble by countries 0:03:55.600 --> 0:04:01.320 like Malaysia and Sri Lanka, Um and Thailand, and by 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:06.560 nineteen twenty the Far East held the basically the monopoly 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:10.320 on the rubber market. All right, that's a good background. Thanks, 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:16.200 I'm almost done. So about the time the Southeast Asia 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:18.880 started to dominate rubber, we needed it even more than 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:23.719 when Brazil dominated rubber because cars were being mass produced 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.400 in each of those required four rubber tires, right, So 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:30.719 Southeast Asia's hold on rubber was even stronger than than 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.279 the one that Brazil had, plus one in the trunk. Yeah, 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:37.400 that's right, five um. And by the time World War 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.200 Two rolled around, we'd come to rely on rubber so 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:44.000 much that it was calculated the US military the Pentagon 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:46.479 needed thirty two pounds of rubber for every troop on 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:49.640 the ground for things like tires, boots, anything you need 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:52.760 rubber for, right, every soldier, which makes it a It 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:56.440 was a very very very big deal. When the Japanese 0:04:56.440 --> 0:05:00.680 successfully invaded the Pacific theater, including Malaysia in Sri Lanka, 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.280 including all these rubber producing places and cut off the 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:08.599 rubber supply to the US, and We're like, we need rubber, yeah, 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.080 we need it bad. And they were like, well we've 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.920 got it. Yes, And by the way, let's go. When 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:17.120 you win, there's going to be stragglers on these islands. 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:23.159 You will one day podcast about them. Hero. So what happened, Chuck, well, Josh. 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:28.160 Because the US is industrious and bright and has it 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.320 never say die attitude, they said, you know what, why 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:36.160 don't we commission some labs and academic institutions to develop 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:39.480 a synthetic rubber. So they put out the call because 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:42.440 they needed this for the wartime demand. And UH, all 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:46.320 these chemists got to work on it, and UH invented 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:51.200 something called g R dash S, which is Government Rubber styrene, 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:54.839 and it turned out to be a great replacement for rubber, 0:05:54.960 --> 0:06:00.000 and by we were producing twice the amount of all 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:04.359 all the world's rubber combined, the synthetic rubber and synthetic 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.240 rubber in the US. Wow. So this is like one 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:09.400 of the most this is one of the biggest chemical 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:15.400 chemical engineering accomplishments ever created, ever undertaken. Right, um so 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:19.599 g RS huge still in use today. Right, is like 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:24.159 the standard for synthetic rubber. Um it changed everything like 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:26.520 that was it was like bye bye, Malaysia, Sorry about 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:30.520 your your rubber monopoly falling apart. You shouldn't have let 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.200 you pain invade. Well, I'm sure they still had plenty 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:35.600 of customers. I'm sure they still did. They weren't like, oh, 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:37.919 we got all this rubber, right, what are we gonna do? 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:42.120 We we we chose the wrong team. Uh So, this, 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:46.840 this synthetic rubber, this triumph of chemical engineering, was not 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:51.040 without setbacks though, Right. Well, no, anytime you're trying to 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:53.359 synthesize something like that, it's gonna there's gonna be some 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:55.800 ups and downs. And this was a nationwide challenge by 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:57.919 the War Production Board. It wasn't just like hey, you 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.360 five guys over here. It was like, attention in all 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:03.680 chemical engineers, all chemists, anybody who has anything to do 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:07.000 with chemistry. We need a synthetic rubber, and we needed 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:10.280 an abundant supply. So there are a lot of people 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.320 working on this, and one of those guys was James 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:17.480 Wright of General Electric GE. He mixed bork acid with 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:20.920 silicon oil, and uh, so you know that this is 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:24.800 gonna be a great synthetic rubber. Unfortunately it wasn't a 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:29.040 great synthetic rubber. His quote unquote bouncing putty is what 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:33.280 he called it. But Gee thought I had some promise. 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.520 Gee thought I had some promise. But it did pretty 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:41.400 much wallow away in obscurity at first, right for um, 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:43.640 almost a decade. It just kind of made the rounds 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:45.960 to other places like, hey, can your guys do anything 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:50.200 like with this, We'll share the patent, whatever, just figure 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.320 out what we can do with this, and uh, apparently 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:57.200 GE got this. Uh. It was so widespread that it 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.960 made its way to a party that a guy named 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.680 Peter Hodgson, who owned an ad agency in New Haven, Connecticut, 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:07.320 attended a cocktail party. Remember spam. That's where spam came from. 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:09.840 Cocktail party in New Year's Eve. Great things happen when 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.080 you get together and drink. Uh. This guy was at 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:15.240 a at a cocktail party and saw some people playing 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.640 with this um bouncing putty that James as James Wright 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:21.200 called it, and said, you know what, these adults seem 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:25.200 fascinated by this. I just happened to be working on 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.520 a catalog for a toy store, and I think this 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.680 would make a great adult novelty. So he approached the 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:35.320 lady who owned the Block toy store, right yeah, and 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.240 I got there's varying accounts of this story. I think 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:41.000 it's one of those deals where because I saw somewhere 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:43.440 where she was the one that saw it and contacted 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.760 him and said, hey, can you put this in my catalog? 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:52.520 So either way, Peter Hodgson and Ruth fall Gadder, who 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.800 owned the Block Shop toy store, they they decided to 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.120 put it on the pages of their their catalog to 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.439 sell as a toy. Right and it was two dollars, 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:08.400 not chump change in nine. No, it's definitely not um 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:14.000 and it was an adult novelty as they reckoned, right, Sorry, 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:17.559 just say adult novelty and a lot of things come 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:21.080 to mind, Spitzer Gifts, I know, I know. It wasn't 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.640 that kind of an adult worldly okay, uh no, it 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.520 was an adult diversion. It became a big seller, is 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:30.880 what it became. Yeah. So yeah, it was the block 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:33.920 shops biggest seller, one of them. Um. And then this 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:37.480 this I found a little hazy for reasons that remain unclear. 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:40.440 Did you find anything out about why fall got her 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.920 stopped backing the product. I couldn't find anything on that, 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:45.560 but I guess even though it sold big for her, 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.319 she was just like whatever. Maybe she just had her 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:49.920 thing going and she's like, why don't I want to 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:52.600 start a new product. I'm a toy store owner? Yeah, 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:54.719 why do I want to be a millionaire? Exactly when 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:58.360 he's the root of all evil for her, R. Rubic, 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:02.600 I have no no plans for the exactly so uh so, 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.000 the whole, the whole, the whole drive, the whole push 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.160 to make this into something big, what we now know 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:12.640 as silly Putty fell completely the Hodgson and he turned 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:17.000 into a whirling dervish. Between nineteen fifty, he borrowed a 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.000 hundred and forty seven dollars and bought another batch from 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:23.800 ge hired a Yale student to roll them into uh 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:28.680 twenty eight graham one ounce balls, packaged them in plastic 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:34.280 Easter eggs, and sold them to double Day bookshops and 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:39.520 Neiman Marcus along the way. He also um took them 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:43.280 to some chemical engineers in Schenectady, right yeah, and said, hey, 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:47.120 copy that reverse engineering. It's like that website that has 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:49.599 like all of your favorite recipes from like Applebee's and 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:52.960 Kentucky Fried Chicken. Reverse engineering. First get chicken from a 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:56.520 sealed bag, right, that's pretty sauced exactly, and put it 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.000 in a pan. Yes, they're like, do you have Cisco's 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.120 phone number? So that's what he did, and you're right, 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:04.720 he did make pretty quick work of it, um, because 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.960 after he opened a manufacturing plant. Yes, all this is 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.800 in a year he first encountered this stuff in this 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.560 is nineteen fifty. He believed in this what would be 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.440 Actually he's he had already settled on silly Putty as 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:19.640 the name. Yeah, well, he was an ad agency guy, 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.600 so brain storing some names, evaluated fifteen of them, was like, 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.760 this is the one he trademarked. It was Nutty Putty one. 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:27.000 I think that was one of them. I think that 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:29.959 would have sold to So he had the silly Putty name. 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:33.120 At this point, opened the manufacturing plant in Connecticut, and 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.680 soon after that landed Neeman Marcus in double day bookshops 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.240 as customers, which was huge, it was, but it became 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:43.560 even huger when um some writers from the new Yorker 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.240 went to Double Day, and they encountered, do you want 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:49.000 to read this part? You're I'm not gonna read it, 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:52.440 Scotch and read this one all right. It was in 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:55.160 the Talk of the Town section in nineteen fifty in 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:57.880 the New Yorker. We went into the Double Day bookshop 0:11:57.880 --> 0:11:59.960 at Fifth Avenue and fifty second Street the other day, 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:02.840 intending in our innocence to buy a book, and found 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:06.640 all the clerks busy selling silly putty, a gooey, pinkish, 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:11.400 repellent looking commodity. The commodity I love that that comes 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:14.520 in plastic containers, the size and shape of eggs. We 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.280 sought out Mr Lee Weber, the manager of the bookshop, 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:19.720 to ascertain the mysterious link between it and Double Day. 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:22.400 He told us that silly putty is the most terrific 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:25.240 item and that Double Day shops have been privileged to 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:29.640 handle it since forever. Amber yea forever Amber. I looked 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.160 it up. It was a bestseller from the forties. It 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:35.800 was about a woman in Restoration England's late seventeenth century 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:39.040 England who, through her sexy wit, went from rags to 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:41.600 riches and became like the favorite mistress of Charles the 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:45.719 second was banned in Boston. Yeah so because of this 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:50.000 um pretentious bit of cynical whimsy that appeared in the 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:55.880 New Yorker, Um, the sales overnight, uh for Silly Putty 0:12:56.240 --> 0:13:02.040 just exploded. He got Hodgson got um three hundred, seven 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:06.679 hundred and fifty thousand orders. Two D Man, Why did 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.040 I quarter of a mill? You're probably thinking three quarters? 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:13.400 I was. I was thinking about the orders that weren't there, exactly. 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:15.280 He got a quarter of a mill in three days, 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:17.640 a quarter of a million orders, and at two bucks 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.480 a pop, that's a lot of money, especially considering that 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:26.000 he only half a million dollars. Yeah, yeah, that's well. Yeah, 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:27.840 I was thinking about the half a million he didn't make. 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:05.840 Uh So it was like basically an overnight success thanks 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.400 to Neiman Marcus, Double Day Books and the New Yorker 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:12.199 and GE and the Japanese. But I mean again, this 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:14.840 is all happening in a year that's pretty speedy. This 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:18.199 is a whirlwind year for this guy. I'm happy for him. 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:20.680 Just just looking back on this story, I hope he 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:22.520 was a good guy and he didn't like beat up 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.440 little kids on his way to work. He passed away 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.600 in nineteen seventy six. I hope before then he didn't 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:30.960 do bad things, but he saw it become a huge 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:34.120 success because when he died in nineteen seventy six, Silly 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:38.000 Putty was in twenty two countries plus the United States, 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:40.640 with sales exceeding five million a year. And that was 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:43.000 in seventy six. Yeah, which I looked it up. That's 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:48.440 nineteen million today, ten dollars, I think. But um, it's 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:52.480 it's pretty it's pretty good. Yeah. Uh yeah, they seem to, 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:55.400 they seem to, Yeah, well he's set up um Arnold 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:58.440 Clark Inc. And I never found out who Arnold Clark kiss. 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:02.480 Maybe that was an alien of his, who knows, um, 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:07.640 But Yeahola apparently owns Silly Putty. Now, now we've just 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:11.520 described the history of Silly Putty. That should be enough. Um, 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.800 But I mean, surely there's no one out there who 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.440 hasn't played a Silly Putty before. I used to play 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:19.800 with it like crazy when I was a kid. And 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:22.360 one thing I would do, which is something that they 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:24.800 found out. You know, it was originally intended for adults, 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:26.840 and they were kind of surprised to learn that kids 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:29.200 were into it and it didn't take long for the 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.240 kids sales to dwarf that of adults. It was nine 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:37.920 sales overtook it. Initially he said, He's like, you know, 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:40.280 this is great for adults because you can come home 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:42.680 and unwind at the end of the day by squeezing 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:46.840 it and just blowing off steam by copying newsprint with it, 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:48.920 May I, And that's what I did with it, was 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.000 was copied comic books. So in that New Yorker article 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:54.680 they interviewed Hodgson and he had he had a quote, 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.480 it means five minutes of escape from neurosis. It means 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.920 not having to worry about career or family difficulties, and 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:05.800 it appeals to people of superior intellect. The inherent ridiculousness 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:08.160 of the material acts as an emotional release to hard 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.920 pressed adults. So it obviously worked because we're not in 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:15.080 Korea any longer. It's interesting, though, that he was wrong. 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:17.760 I think it's funny how somebody can be wrong on 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:20.200 something and still be right, you know what I mean, 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:23.520 Like all the uses and the intent was he was 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:27.720 completely wrong, but it's still skyrocketed, and he's like, oh, well, 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.120 it's for kids. Then he kind of cast a wide net. 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.720 On the patent license, it was for um stress relief 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:37.800 hand therapy for people who needed it. Um it could 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:40.840 be used to block out low frequency noises. Yeah, they 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:42.800 still claim you can do all this stuff today, like 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:47.000 it's good for therapy and for like gumming up holes 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:51.240 and cleaning typewriters key which is a huge use these days. 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:53.760 Well computer keys. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about this, 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:57.360 um but yeah, so the guy was very much focused 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:01.160 on it being uh um for are adults, but kids 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:03.680 kind of took it for themselves, mainly because you could. 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:06.600 One of the great properties of silly putty is you 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.720 can stretch it out, push it down on newsprint, and 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.160 you have a mirror image of it. That's what I said. 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.000 That's what he used to do. Oh you did say that. Yeah, comics, comics, 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:16.959 and you can't it's harder to it's harder to do 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:20.240 that these days because the print they use, like you 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:25.000 literally have to find like a newspaper in order to 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.400 do that. Yeah, you can't do it on the Internet 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.399 or a magazine. Yeah, you can't do it on a kindle. 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:35.639 You could do it on a magazine. H No, I 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:37.560 think you can know, dude, it's got to pick up 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:40.280 the ink. I know I can't do it on a magazine. 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.080 I can tell you from reading Harper's by the Pool 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.160 that that's stuff smears. And if it's smears, I guarantee 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:50.239 you can get it on silly putty. Uh. Lucky for 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:52.520 him though, it was non toxic, so when kids started 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.320 playing with it and inevitably putting it in their mouth, 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:58.159 there were no issues with that. Right, So how you 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:00.480 should not eat it? We should say that don't eat 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:02.919 anything that's not food or anything that has the name 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.919 silly in it, or putty, silly string, silly anything. Um. 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:11.399 So Hodgson made mention of its um inherent ridiculousness of 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:15.320 the material. Right, Um, it has some really strange properties. Uh. 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:18.320 He originally called it so. He described it as a 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:23.280 solid liquid right when you um. When you stretch it, 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:28.520 it's like taffy. It stretches, right. Uh. If you pull it, 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.439 it just snaps apart if you quickly and with a 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.440 lot of force. Um. If you stick it to like say, 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.240 um bookcase, you come back a few days later, it 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:43.760 will have very slowly moved down, very slowly, very which 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:46.199 means it flows, which is weird. But we'll get to 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:48.240 that in a minute. Um. And when you roll it 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:51.600 up into a ball, it bounces higher than rubber. Yeah, 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:53.560 they did a test. They rolled it into like a 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:56.200 perfect little ball, and they dropped it with no force 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:59.159 from three ft and it bounce bounces back two and 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:03.480 a half feet. Supposedly, that is dynamite. Not bad. And 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:05.040 if you throw it down real hard, you know you've 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:08.359 got yourself a super ball in your hands. So what 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:11.639 is the stuff? Well, what are the the what's the 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.760 science of silly putty chuck? The science of so? Well, 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:17.840 before we get there, can I say about the egg? 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:20.400 There are several varying accounts on why it was put 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:24.479 in an egg. Some people say it was because his 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:28.120 first batch went out before Easter and then he just said, hey, 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:29.960 it's actually pretty good idea, let's just keep it in 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.320 the egg. Other people say he got the inspiration while 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.840 eating eggs one morning, good for you. And still other 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:42.200 people say that he couldn't find another container in abundance, 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:45.199 and he had like a line on these plastic eggs, 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:47.520 and I was like, I'll just use desk because this 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:49.280 is a pretty good way to put it in there. 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:51.000 It's about an ounce so I let's just do that 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:55.800 either way. That became the signature that's still used today. 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.960 Anybody full of egg carms, right, the egg fill is 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.439 silly putty. I feel silly. You could probably get silly 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:04.879 putty full of egg, but you don't have to do 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:09.320 it yourself at home. Um. Alright, So back to what 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:16.000 this stuff is, um, josh, it is a polymer, right, yeah, 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:22.520 it's a visco elastic polymer. Basically, it's subject to the 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:27.240 science of fluid chemistry. Right. And fluids are not necessarily liquids. 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.480 Liquids are fluids, but not all fluids or liquids. Gas 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:36.560 can be a fluid, Some semi solid substances can be fluid. Basically, 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.440 a fluid is anything that yields to slight pressure and 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:48.000 has no definite shape. Fluid Your your gut is at 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:53.240 least okay. Um. So so that's uh, that's the science. 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:55.720 That's the part of chemistry and physics that we're looking 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:59.680 as fluid chemistry. Um. And the ruling principle of that 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:03.800 of fluid chemistry is viscosity. Where do we talk about this? 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:06.640 I know we've talked about viscosity. We talked about viscosity 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:12.879 in UM quicksand right sheer mayonnaise This quas visquosity, Josh. 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:15.960 Viscosity is uh. It measures how much a fluid resist 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.440 flow at a certain temperature. So so viscosity is resistance 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:21.639 resistance to flow. If you're like me and you can 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:25.199 never remember what's viscosity, what's viscous, or what's high or 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:29.000 low viscous, viscosity is resistance to flow. Actually the easiest 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:32.399 way to remember is water is low. That pretty much 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:34.720 says it all, just so, that's easy. Like peanut butter 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:38.000 would have a high viscosity, water would have a low viscosity. 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:41.119 That's pretty easy way to it has a high resistance 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:44.560 to flow or low resistance to flow, like honey or 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:49.720 molasses and um. Viscosity is often measured in pascal seconds, 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:54.320 Not so much anymore now it's measured by dying seconds 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:58.200 per square centimeter, also called poise, and ten poise equals 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:03.600 one pascal second. What that means I cannot. I couldn't 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:06.879 rent my mind around before then every site that I 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.880 saw it took it for granted that I understood what 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:14.639 what that measures. But it measures viscosity or flow. As 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:16.919 far as I understand, what I love is that someone 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:21.440 somewhere said, uh, pascal seconds just said and cutting it right. 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:25.520 The guy whose last name was Poise or poisel, I 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:28.560 believe that's what happ came up with poise um. But yeah, 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:33.359 so that's uh how viscosity is measured UM. And the 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:37.560 more pascal seconds are, the more poise there are, the 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:41.719 more the higher the viscosity is UM. But the thing 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:47.720 about viscous fluids, they all well, I should say, most 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:53.240 of them are subject to um temperature. That's what affects 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:56.480 their viscosity. If you if you have cold honey that 0:22:56.520 --> 0:22:59.160 you're trying to get out of the bottle, it doesn't 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:01.560 flow very well. But if it's a room temperature or 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:04.840 if it's warm, it flows. It's it's much less viscous, right, 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.960 it flows much more easily because it's subject just to temperature. 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:12.680 That makes it a newtonium fluid. That's also a pet peeve. 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:15.399 When you go to a place and get pancakes or 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:17.879 waffles or French toast and they have the heated syrup. 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:21.600 Oh I like that, you do? Yeah? I like my 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:25.000 syrup thick? Okay um, you like it thin and watery 0:23:25.080 --> 0:23:28.360 like that? Yeah, as long as it's warm it's watery 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:32.480 because it's low and viscosity and it's warm. Um, but 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:35.200 that's but it's just temperature. There has nothing to do 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:37.600 with force or pressure or anything like that. If a 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:41.520 fluid is subject to not only temperature but also force, 0:23:42.600 --> 0:24:14.879 it's what's called a non Newtonium fluid. Chuck, are we 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:17.320 at the email point? I believe we are, Chuck. This 0:24:17.400 --> 0:24:19.480 was pretty nato. We got an email from a young 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:24.040