#shear-thinning

A 4-minute, unedited one-shot video of colorful paint sliding down a sheet? Yes, please. (Video and image credit: R. De Giuli) Read the full article

Since 1938, every ball in Major League Baseball has been covered in a special "rubbing mud" harvested from a secret location in New Jersey. Although the league has tried in the past to replace the mud with an alternative, it's never stuck.  (Image credit: L. Juarez; research credit: S. Pradeep et al.; via EOS) Read the full article

Honeybees, with their stingers, get lots of attention, but the Americas have plenty of stinger-less honeymakers, too. These stingless bees are native to Mexico, where beekeepers cultivate them for pollination. (Video and image credit: Deep Look) Read the full article

These days glass screens travel with us everywhere, and they can take some big hits on the way. Manufacturers have made tougher glass, but they continue to look for ways to protect our screens. Recently, a study suggested that non-Newtonian fluids are well-suited to the task. (Image credit: G. Rosenke; research credit: J. Richards et al.; via Physics World) Read the full article

Spreading paint with a brush or with fingers is familiar activity for most people. It's also similar to processes used in industry for spreading thin layers of paint and other complex fluids. In a recent study, researchers took a look at how a soft, elastic blade (similar to a paintbrush or one's fingers) spreads shear-thinning fluids (like paint) and Newtonian fluids (like water).  (Image credit: A. Kolosyuk; research credit: M. Krapez et al.) Read the full article

I've covered some odd studies in my time, but this might be the strangest: to understand how active polymers affect viscosity, researchers loaded drunk worms into a rheometer. (Image and research credit: A. Deblais et al.; via Gizmodo and APS Physics)