This is what causes PDMS’s viscoelasticity. The polymer chains are quite flexible, and when they are particularly long, as in the case of silly putty, they can become loosely entangled around one-another. This basically means that it is capable of flowing like a liquid in some cases, but behaves like an elastic solid in others. It’s what’s known as a viscoelastic solid. The properties of PDMS are partly responsible for silly putty’s properties. Silicone polymers are, of course, more commonly known for their use in breast implants – and aren’t to be mistaken for the element silicon on its own, which would be a lot more uncomfortable!
PDMS is a type of silicone, a group of polymers defined by the fact that they all contain Si-O-Si units as the basis of their polymeric structure. It’s the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS for short) that’s a large contributor to the strange properties of silly putty, however. It flows imperceptibly slowly, as if it were a thick liquid, but when rolled up into a ball will bounce if thrown at a hard surface. A closer look at the chemicals that make up silly putty can help us explain this strange behaviour.Ī number of ingredients go into making silly putty: by weight, 65% of it is a compound called polydimethylsiloxane, but colouring agents are also included to give the wide range of colours that the putty comes in. However, pull it apart with enough force and it’ll snap clean in two. Stretch it slowly and it happily deforms, and can be molded very easily. If you want to read a wild overnight success story, read Hodgson's 1976 New York Times obituary about how Silly Putty took them man from struggling marketing-advertising guy to millionaire.Silly putty (or science putty, as it’s sometimes referred to) is an odd material. Hodgson, seeing the goofy and creative potential in this strange material, bought the rights to the formula from GE. They only knew it wouldn’t work as a rubber substitute.Īlong came marketing genius Peter Calvert Leary Hodgson, Sr., who saw the putty in action at a cocktail party. The scientists who reacted silicone with boric acid created the first nascent version of the iconic stuff, but they had no idea a potential money-maker was in their hands. During the dark days of WWII, General Electric chemists were searching for a synthetic rubber to make up for shortages caused by Japan marauding in the Pacific Rim.
The story of Silly Putty's provenance is one of happy accidents-and the power of knowing a good thing when you see it.
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