By Anupum Pant
Remember the time we talked about a boiled egg spinning on a pool of milk? If you don’t then it’s good to know that if you do spin a hard-boiled egg on a pool of milk (or any relatively viscous liquid) the milk mysteriously climbs the side of the egg, reaches the equator, and then sprinkles around beautifully. It’s fun to see it happen. This is something similar…
The thing we see today is called the Weissenberg effect and this is how it works.
You take a spinning rod and put it into a solution of liquid polymer (which is usually very viscous). And when you do that, you see that the liquid polymer magically climbs the walls of the rod.
Some liquids reach a little high and never beyond. While others can climb up really high. The difference in heights to which different liquids can climb to is demonstrated in the following video very clearly. The three liquids used in it are as follows:
- Guar gum solution crosslinked with sodium tetraborate
- Pancake batter
- and Dyed glue crosslinked with sodium tetraborate.