Boing Boing: What 250 lbs of Silly Putty looks like

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

What 250 lbs of Silly Putty looks like

Clay Bavor, a product manager at Google, bought an eighth of a ton of Silly Putty and put it into one huge pile on his desk. After taking the photo above, he attempted to break the Silly Putty into chunks to distribute it to his friends. It wasn't as easy as he had hoped.

The problem was that once together, Silly Putty doesn't like to come apart, and none of us had any idea of how to deal with this effect. We tried everything: very strong people (didn't work), scissors (stabbing worked, slicing didn't), 28-gauge steel wire (broke), 22-gauge steel wire (broke), 16-gauge steel wire (too thick), and twisting and breaking (worked well for "smaller" pieces -- under five pounds, that is.)

Link (via Neatorama)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:23:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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Support Bloggers' Rights! HOWTO: Get a link posted to Boing Boing Boing Boing Mobile powered by Winksite Fark rules! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States [and other countries]. Stats (About our stats) defeat censorware Policies Our first five years' worth of posts in one file	Wednesday, December 28, 2005 What 250 lbs of Silly Putty looks like Clay Bavor, a product manager at Google, bought an eighth of a ton of Silly Putty and put it into one huge pile on his desk. After taking the photo above, he attempted to break the Silly Putty into chunks to distribute it to his friends. It wasn't as easy as he had hoped. The problem was that once together, Silly Putty doesn't like to come apart, and none of us had any idea of how to deal with this effect. We tried everything: very strong people (didn't work), scissors (stabbing worked, slicing didn't), 28-gauge steel wire (broke), 22-gauge steel wire (broke), 16-gauge steel wire (too thick), and twisting and breaking (worked well for "smaller" pieces -- under five pounds, that is.) Link (via Neatorama) posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:23:17 PM permalink \| Other blogs' comments Email this entry to: Your email address: Message (optional):	Boing Boing Sponsored by: Your Text Ad Here Get BB by email: