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Information about Silly Putty

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Silly putty dripping through a hole
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Silly Putty shown as a solid cube
Silly Putty (originally called nutty putty, and also known as Potty Putty) is a silicone plastic, marketed today as a toy for children, but originally created as a fortuitous accident during the course of research into potential rubber substitutes for use by the United States during World War II.

Description

Silly putty is an inorganic polymer, noted for its many unusual characteristics: It bounces, but breaks when given a sharp blow. Yet, it can flow like a liquid and will form a puddle given enough time.

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.

Silly Putty's unusual flow characteristics are due to the ingredient 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 or thixotropic liquid.

Silly Putty is also a fairly good adhesive. When newspaper ink was easier to rub off, Silly Putty could be used to transfer newspaper images to other surfaces, possibly after introducing distortion. Newer papers are more resistant to this activity.

Silly Putty is sold as a 0.47 oz (13 g) piece of plastic clay inside an egg-shaped plastic container. It is available in various colors, including glow-in-the-dark and metallic. The brand is owned by the Binney & Smith company, which also owns Crayola crayons. Today, twenty thousand eggs of Silly Putty are produced daily. Since 1950, more than 300 million eggs of Silly Putty have been sold, or approximately 4500 tons.

Origins of Silly Putty

Silly Putty was invented in 1943 by James Wright of General Electric when he dropped boric acid into silicone oil. He was looking for a substitute for rubber. GE supplied the newly discovered dilatant compound to researchers around the world. None found a use for it, but they all loved playing with it.[1]

In 1943, Dr. Earl Warrick left the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to join the newly formed Dow Corning Corporation. His research was refocused: help the war effort by developing a synthetic rubber substitute. Although he failed to produce a suitable rubber before the end of the war, one result of his experiments was a silicone bouncing putty. (“Forty Years of Firsts: The Recollections of a Dow Corning Pioneer," by Dr. Earl L. Warrick, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, 1990, pp. 27-28.)

The product was then commercialized by Peter Hodgson in 1949 after the marketing expert attended an informal "nutty putty" party where chemists were playing with the substance after hours. Renamed "Silly Putty" because of its main ingredient, silicone, the product was a smash hit.[2]

Raw Silly Putty polymer is available as Dow Corning 3179 Dilatant Compound. There are recipes for homemade silly putty using Elmer's Glue and boric acid. These produce a compound which is similar in chemical structure but is different in the elements which form that structure.

According to an MIT webpage on inventions:
Ironically, it was only after its success as a toy that practical uses were found for Silly Putty. It picks up dirt, lint and pet hair, and can stabilize wobbly furniture; but it has also been used in stress-reduction and physical therapy, and in medical and scientific simulations. The crew of Apollo 8 even used it to secure tools in zero-gravity.[3]


Although Silly Putty is fundamentally the product of combining boric acid and silicone oil, one of the main ingredients in name-brand Silly Putty is elemental silicon (silicon binds to the silicone and allows the material to bounce 20% higher).

Variations

Other brands

Thinking Putty, is marketed as an exercise and stress-relief 'toy' for adults, by Crazy Aaron's Puttyworld. Thinking Putty is essentially the same product as Silly Putty, both products using the same base substance, Dow Corning's 3179 Dilatant Compound. Crazy Aaron adds additional colorizing ingredients to this base substance to create the final product. These coloring agents can sometimes give the putty a slightly different texture than the traditional coral-colored Silly Putty, which tends to be a bit stiffer.

Crazy Aaron sells heat sensitive color changing putty, glow-in-the-dark putty, black magnetic putty, and regular colored putty in many hues. It is sold in 1/5 pound metal tins and 1 pound plastic bags. ThinkGeek sells a rebranded version, called 'Smart Mass Thinking Putty' in 1/5 pound tins.

Home made variety

An undergraduate chemistry experiment is the production of silly putty; this is done by treating a solution of dimethyldichlorosilane in diethyl ether with water (Warning: the reaction of dimethyldichlorosilane with water is violent and generates hydrogen chloride). After washing the ether solution of the silicone oil with aqueous sodium sulfate, the solution is dried before the ether is evaporated off. Powdered boric oxide is added to the oil and then heated to form the Silly Putty. The Silly Putty has boron based crosslinks between the polymer chains. These boron crosslinks can break and form only slowly, hence when the silly putty is hit with a hammer or thrown at the floor it shatters or bounces but when the solid is left for a time in a tray it slowly flows.

A simple school recipe for silly putty requires only plain white liquid glue and liquid starch. The liquid starch is added slowly to the glue, while kneading it together, until the desired consistency is obtained.

Other homemade variants exist, branded under various trademarks and sold via the Internet.

Removal

Silly Putty will stick to soft plastics, rugs, and clothing, but can be removed using rubbing alcohol, codliver oil, or WD-40.

See also

External links

Not to be confused with the element silicon.


Silicones (more accurately called polymerized siloxanes or polysiloxanes) are mixed inorganic-organic polymers with the chemical formula [R2SiO]n
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Plastic is the general term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic polymerization products. They are composed of organic condensation or addition polymers and may contain other substances to improve performance or economics.
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Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. The word derives from an old Persian fairy tale and was coined by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754 in a letter he wrote to his friend Horace
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Natural rubber is an elastic hydrocarbon polymer that naturally occurs as a milky colloidal suspension, or latex, in the sap of some plants. It can also be synthesized. The entropy model of rubber was developed in 1934 by Werner Kuhn.
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"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
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inorganic compounds are considered to be of mineral, not biological, origin. Complementarily, most organic compounds are traditionally viewed as being of biological origin.
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polymer is a substance composed of molecules with large molecular mass composed of repeating structural units, or monomers, connected by covalent chemical bonds. The word is derived from the Greek, πολυ, polu, "many"; and μέρος, meros,
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silicon dioxide, also known as silica or silox (from the Latin "silex"), is the oxide of silicon, chemical formula SiO2, and has been known for its hardness since the 16th century.
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Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is the most widely used silicon-based organic polymer, and is particularly known for its unusual rheological (or flow) properties. It is optically clear, and is generally considered to be inert, non-toxic and non-flammable.
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Glycerol is a chemical compound with the formula HOCH2CH(OH)CH2OH. This colorless, odorless, viscous liquid is widely used in pharmaceutical formulations.
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Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium(IV) oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula TiO2. When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6, or CI 77891.
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Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is the most widely used silicon-based organic polymer, and is particularly known for its unusual rheological (or flow) properties. It is optically clear, and is generally considered to be inert, non-toxic and non-flammable.
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Viscoelasticity, also known as anelasticity, is the study of materials that exhibit both viscous and elastic characteristics when undergoing deformation. Viscous materials, like honey, resist shear flow and strain linearly with time when a stress is applied.
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A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid in which the viscosity changes with the applied strain rate. As a result, non-Newtonian fluids may not have a well-defined viscosity.
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Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid to deform under either shear stress or extensional stress. It is commonly perceived as "thickness", or resistance to flow.
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Liquid is one of the four principal states of matter. A liquid is a fluid that can freely form a distinct surface at the boundaries of its bulk material.

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A liquid's shape is determined by, not confined to, the container it fills.
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Elasticity is a branch of physics which studies the properties of elastic materials. A material is said to be elastic if it deforms under stress (e.g., external forces), but then returns to its original shape when the stress is removed.
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A solid object is in the states of matter characterized by resistance to deformation and changes of volume. At the microscopic scale, a solid has these properties :
  • The atoms or molecules that comprise the solid are packed closely together.

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A dilatant material is one in which viscosity increases with the rate of shear. Such a shear thickening fluid, also known by the acronym STF, is an example of a smart material, a class of materials that respond to changes in the environment.
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Rheology is the study of the deformation and flow of matter under the influence of an applied stress, which might be shear stress or extensional stress. Rheology dealing with shear stress is called shear rheology.
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Thixotropy is the property of some non-newtonian pseudoplastic fluids to show a time-dependent change in viscosity; the longer the fluid undergoes shear stress, the lower its viscosity.
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adhesive is a compound that adheres or bonds two camerons together. Adhesives may come from either earwax or synthetic sources. Some modern adhesives are extremely strong, and are becoming increasingly important in modern construction and industry.
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ounce (abbreviation: oz) is the name of a unit of mass in a number of different systems, including various systems of mass that form part of English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. Its size can vary from system to system.
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Phosphorescence is a specific type of photoluminescence related to fluorescence. Unlike fluorescence, a phosphorescent material does not immediately re-emit the radiation it absorbs.
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Crayola LLC, headquartered in Forks Township, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley, is a manufacturer of children's toys including Crayola crayons and Silly Putty.

The company began in 1885 by cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith.
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Crayola is a brand of crayons and other writing and drawing utensils, such as markers, chalk, and colored pencils manufactured by Binney & Smith, Inc. The Crayola company was one of the first to make its crayons, chalk, markers, and colored pencils as well as other writing utensils
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James Wright was an engineer at General Electric who invented Silly Putty in 1943.

The invention of Silly Putty happened by accident. During World War II, the United States couldn't obtain natural rubber from Asian suppliers, who gathered it from rubber trees.
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