HOLES are the last thing you would expect to find in a fluid. But take a mixture of ordinary cornstarch and water and shake it, and it forms cylindrical holes that last for as long as shaking continues.
“It’s completely counterintuitive,” says physicist Robert Deegan of the University of Texas at Austin, a member of the team that stumbled on the effect.
Normally, any holes in the surface of a liquid quickly fill up under hydrostatic pressure. But not so in the cornstarch mixture, which, unlike most liquids, exhibits a curious property known as shear thickening: the more you stir,…
