Regarding the miracle this is Play-Doh.

[Dung_Beetle]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

Play-Doh[SUP]tm[/SUP] is a gel, which is a class of amorphous solid, i.e. it maintains form under normal conditions and a limited amount of stress, but will flow like a viscous liquid under high shear inlcuding shear from tensile or compressive loads.

Although it has no long range structure, the gluten-based startch in it will create short range intermolecular bonds (hence, while it picks up stuff) and cross-linking of the starchy molecules that allow it to reform, just like bread dough. It has various plasticizers, humectants, and stabilizers that keep it plastic and moist.

Aw, you just read that off the back of the can!

[Cartoonacy]

@Senegoid

This, yet you never made the connection that Play-Doh == play dough?

D’oh!

[CalMeacham]

@Senegoid

This, yet you never made the connection that Play-Doh == play dough?

There’s also the connection (since it’s an educational toy) to Plato = Play-Doh

[LSLGuy]

@Senegoid

This, yet you never made the connection that Play-Doh == play dough?

The idea that it’s a moldable flexible solid material and hence similar to an (unrisen) bread dough would be pretty obvious. Another obvious idea is that any material of bread dough-like consistency is called a “dough”. Hardware & paint stores have certainly sold a patching product called “wood dough” for decades. I’ve heard various extrudable plastic materials referred to as doughs. Even some explosives are termed doughs.

But the idea that the Play-Doh brand of a toy made of some dough-consistency inert and non-spoiling material is necessarily made from the same basic ingredients as bread? No, I wouldn’t get that idea from the name. And didn’t until I read this thread.

And while my childhood contained a lot of Play-Doh with that ineffable smell, it didn’t contain any homemade wheat-flour-and-water-as-toy dough.

[Cartoonacy]

Its Wikipedia entry says: “Play-Doh’s current manufacturer, Hasbro, reveals the compound is primarily a mixture of water, salt, and flour, while its 2004 United States patent indicates it is composed of water, a starch-based binder, a retrogradation inhibitor, salt, lubricant, surfactant, preservative, hardener, humectant, fragrance, and color. A petroleum additive gives the compound a smooth feel, and borax prevents mold from developing.”

[Rhythmdvl]

@Trinopus

I don’t know the name of the property of a substance that is divisible and re-combinable. But a cup of power has that property. You can measure it into two half-cups, then combine it again, and there’s no way to tell it was ever separated. Regular bread dough has this property, and chewed chewing gum, and so on.

Coming summer 2016: Trinopus Jones and the Cup of Power

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@Trinopus

– if you put the elephant into a coffee cup, it doesn’t change into the shape of the inside of the cup –

I simply wanted to quote that as a sentence you don’t see every day. Only on Da Dope…