With all the talk about glass being a solid or a liquid, A question has been dancing around my little noodle. Is Silly Putty (the only toy that can read comics) a Solid or a liquid? It will take up the shape of what ever it’s poured into, but it will also break and snap when pulled on.
Bad spellers of the world… UNTIE
I’ve never been able to “pour” Silly Putty. I haven’t had any to play with for a while, but it’s about the consistency of chewed-up gum and less “squishy” than Gack.
Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.
Thunder’s just a noise, boys; lightning does the work. --C. Brock
You can pour silly putty, Kat, it just takes a looong time. 
I can’t for the life of me remember the correct term, but it “flattens” on top in it’s container. Remember?
Peace,
mangeprge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
I bought some Silly Putty about a year ago. It doesn’t seem to “flow” as well as the old stuff. When I was a kid, I used to put it on top of action figures before going to bed to see how it oozed over them overnight. I think it would take about a week now to get the same results.
When someone annoys you it takes 42 muscles to frown. But it takes only 4 muscles to extend your arm and whack them in the head.
I would call it a plastic solid. Plastic in the adjective sense - i.e., something capable of flowing plastically … being deformed by three-year-old hands, gravity, etc., but not tending to return to its original shape.
Thin metals can have plastic characteristics. A wire antenna with a really heavy pair of shoes on it will bend - not a great analogy for silly putty flow, but the best I can do. I mean, you could make a rainbow out of silly putty, right? And it would sag in the middle, but it could be supported by a central pillar (slowing the sag) or sat upon by a silly putty anvil (accelerating the sag).
Another example of plastic solids is the rock in the earth’s mantle - under very high pressure and temperature it can flow. It is not considered a liquid, however, or else it would be called magma. Anyway, marble is “marblized” by pressures, with certain dark rocks getting squished and deformed in a matrix of light rock (sandstone). So the mantle is like silly putty.
Any similarity in the above text to an English word or phrase is purely coincidental.
Are there two identical threads on this board?
Silly putty is a viscoelastic solid. Its response to stress depends an the amount of stress and the rate at which the stress is applied.
jrf
I think malleability is the quality this stuff possesses.