Make Apple Spice Oobleck

Watch cornstarch and applesauce turn into squishy, drippy oobleck in seconds.

 

Materials you'll need

• Corn starch
• Applesauce cup (cinnamon flavor used here)
• Apple pie spice
• Medium bowl
• Spoon

 

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Pour 1 cup of corn starch into a medium bowl.

Step 2: Peel open a single-serve cup of applesauce and squeeze it into the bowl with the corn starch.

Step 3: Sprinkle in about 1 teaspoon of apple pie spice.

Step 4: Mix everything together with a spoon, then switch to your hands, until it forms a ball that feels dry to hold but oozes when it sits in your open palm.

Step 5: Test it out! Squeeze the oobleck into a ball — it'll hold its shape — then relax your hand and watch it drip like a liquid.

Learn more

Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid — a mixture that doesn't play by the usual rules for liquids and solids. It's really just corn starch particles suspended in liquid (applesauce, in this case). When you squeeze it fast, the particles jam together and lock in place, so it acts solid. But the moment you stop applying force, the particles slide back apart and it flows like a liquid again.

Hooked on watching a mixture switch between solid and liquid? Try our Glowing Oobleck DIY next — swap in tonic water and a black light, and watch the same trick light up in the dark.