The oobleck, or cornstarch-water, mixture can act like both a solid and a liquid. This mixture is a suspension. A suspension is a mixture of two substances- in this mixture, it’s a solid, corn starch, dispersed in a liquid, water.

Sir Isaac Newton stated all liquids have viscosity: a measurable property that determines the thickness of a liquid or resistance of that liquid to flow. Newton also stated that viscosity changes with temperature. A change in temperature results in a change in viscosity. For example, if honey is heated, the hot honey has a lower viscosity than that of room temperature or cold honey. The cornstarch-water mixture is an example of a non-Newtonian liquid because its viscosity changes with a change of force or pressure, not with a change of temperature. …show more content…
The pressure from the slap causes the starch molecules to huddle close together. Between these close starch molecules is trapped water molecules. When that pressure, from slapping the oobleck, is released, the water molecules are released from in between the starch molecules and the oobleck “is a liquid again”.

This experiment can be related to the real world by how scientist study quicksand, but what even is quicksand? Quicksand is loose wet sand where the sand is on top of the water. The meaning of the term “quick” in the word quicksand refers to how the mixture of sand and liquid goes back and forth between a solid and a liquid. If a great amount of water runs between sand particles, the sand is forced away from each other. This movement of particles causes the ground to loosen and turn into a liquid.

Due to the water needed to form quicksand, it is usually found near bodies of water such as riverbanks, marshes, lake shorelines, beaches, or any place where water can possibly agitates or over saturate the