Sunday, June 5, 2022
By:
Hi, my name is Justin Andre L. Avendano, you can call me Justin for short. This week I started my job as the Society of Rheology/Soft Matter Kitchen Intern for the summer over at AIP. As the Rheology intern I’m tasked to understand rheology and help create blogs and material to help other people understand rheology in all its wonders! I met my mentor, Arif, for the first time since our interview and he’s been a big help to me the past week. I was pretty blunt with him in saying that I barely know anything about Rheology, and he gladly gave me a crash course on Rheology. I’ll be honest, I’m not one for online lectures (as I usually fall asleep or loose focus) but Arif was amazing at teaching the details about Rheology that would seem really complicated in a very brief and fun manner, using everyday examples at the same time keeping the equations and complex ideas there. I can say with confidence that I have at least a small grasp of what Rheology is, hopefully that grows as I continue this internship.
After our meeting, Arif tasked me with helping him and his colleagues with a video project of theirs explaining the concepts of rheology through instant pudding. As simple as the task seems, I was surprised to see so many tiny details that I never thought to account for when creating instant pudding. Since I’m focusing on Rheology or Fluid Mechanics, I paid close attention to how the pudding was before and after adding more and more of the instant mixture. As I added and whisked more, the mixture became more and more viscous until it reached a point where it became liquid-y pudding. I also noticed that the texture and viscosity was of the likeness of hand sanitizer. A key question I asked myself through out the experiment was: “Does temperature play a role in how the mixture’s rheological features?” When it was freshly made, it was still very liquid-y and had the feature where if I scooped a bit, it would stay but if I squished it, it would act like a liquid —This is called Shear-Thickening. But after I left it in the fridge for the day, it exhibited less of that and became more solid as a whole. This is a question that I’ll hopefully answer by next week after a few more experiments and with the guidance of my amazing mentor Arif.
Justin Andre Avendaño