The Thinking Putty Blog

Don't Try This At Home

Thinking Putty is a lot of fun to play with.  It doesn't take long to discover its ability to copy the tiniest details of objects.  Fingerprints, skin texture, and beard stubble all look pretty cool in putty.  What you shouldn't do is cram a wad of putty onto your eye.  Wait too long to remove it and see what happens:

Firecrackers & Thinking Putty

Thinking Putty fan Mike Niezoda writes me:

What I plan to do is put a fire cracker in my black thinking putty and see if the silly putty contains the blast or if it will shatter because of the force. I hope to have this done soon

Hopefully when I'm done I can still enjoy my black thinking putty.

~Mike Niezgoda a loyal putty enjoyer.

Apparently this email got Mike really excited about his idea because he emailed me again less than an hour later:

I have several picture for you. I'm very sorry I couldn't produce a video, but I don't have a video camera. I'll provide you with an account of what happened.

When the fire cracker went off, the whole thing just shattered. Much of my putty was blown to such small pieces I couldn't even pick them up. The putty was blown at high speeds all over my back yard, the largest piece striking me in the side which hurt a bit but I'm fine. It didn't take me long to gather it all up because fortunately I saw where it all went. Now my silly putty has a slight smell of gun powder.  Minus the little bit of pain and the loss of almost half my black silly putty all over the back yard, it was a good test; and it was all in the name of science.

The pictures I enclosed are as follows

-One of my silly putty before the experiment
-One of the explosive I used
-Two of the explosive wrapped in the thinking putty
-Two of the silly putty and whats left of the explosive, seconds after the explosion and the collection of every thing.
- One of how much silly putty is left so you can see how much was actually blown away.
- And of course, one of me holding my favorite desk toy. (P.S sorry I'm not the prettiest person you'll ever see)

Sorry the pictures are rather big.

Sincerely a loyal putty enjoyer,
Mike Niezgoda

Cool stuff, no doubt.  Mike, some replacement Black Thinking Putty and a free t-shirt are on their way to you.  Keep up the good work.  Oh, and maybe wear some eye protection next time ;-)

Science Fair

Matthew Rosenstein wrote me a month ago about making Thinking Putty for his science fair project.  I appreciated his ambition and knew he'd learn a lot about chemistry in the process so I sent him some raw ingredients to synthesize his own.

We emailed back and forth over the past few weeks and here is his science fair project:

Matthew had fun and learned a few things about Thinking Putty by modifying the formulation with different ingredients and seeing how those changes affected stickyness, bounce, flow, and hardness.  He also learned about chemistry, and the chemical industry by reading heavy technical documentation and MSDS information on the various chemicals involved.

Good work Matt!

Man Get Crazy Aaron Tattoo; Sepsis; Film at 11

One of our fans has really gone the distance in the name of Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty.  You can read all about it here.

This is pretty darn awesome.  Thoughts?

Space Putty Aftermath and Rocket Recovery

What's news around Puttyworld?  As I mentioned previously, our attempt at reaching space with a rocket-bound piece of putty failed.  This was a bummer.  We haven't been able to find any upcoming rocket launches that will accept our payload.  Hopefully something will come up in the future.  Here is the news article of the crash:

UP Aerospace Rocket Found in Desert After Crash

It does look like we'll be getting back some of the putty that survived the crash.  The launch company sent me pictures of the payload.  Titanium wedding rings were so deformed they could have been made from putty.  It also appeared that there were a mass of coins enveloped in...you guessed it...Thinking Putty.  They won't allow me to post the pictures but perhaps they'll piece it all together and send us the putty back.

Improved Snap, Crackle, and Pop

Received this email from a happy PuttyHead, Chance Helmuth.  I thought you all might like to try his suggestion and let me know if it works better for you:

"I'm not sure this is the right email for putty tricks, but I just came up with an idea for a better way to make a big bang with with putty, and I have gotten better results compared with the pop in the "make putty snap, crackle and pop" section of the tricks section. I get an almost terrifyingly loud BANG quite consistently with this technique.

Step 1:roll the putty into a fairly even ball
Step 2:press your thumb halfway through
Step 3:make it bigger by finger-thumb pressing the walls
Step 4:hold the mouth of the bowl-shaped putty up to your mouth, and blow one mouth full of air inside
Step 5:put the mouth of the now balloon shaped putty up to your eye, and look for any thin areas, signaled by light showing through the putty. If there are any big ones, go to step 1.
Step 6: assuming there were little or no lightspots, seal the end andwrap your hands around the sealedd end, halfay up the bubble and squeeze hard.
Step 7:Enjoy, and repeat. :)"

Thinking Putty Bound For Outer Space

It's now semi-offical: We are sending some Thinking Putty into Outer Space!  We've been trying to pull this stunt for many years.  Thanks go out to one particular putty customer, Tim Canny. 

Aside from being a Thinking Putty fan, Tim is also a space enthusiast and works in the aerospace industry.  He's been keeping his ear to the rails and sending promising leads our way.

We've had many false starts.  Over the years we've negotiated with Space Adventures, Scaled Composites (winner of the X-Prize), and even a Russian Cosmonaut who was going to bring some Thinking Putty as a personal item onto the International Space Station.

Now, we've got a tentative launch date of May 20th, 2006 with ZeroG Aerospace.  They'll be sending a rocket into a sub-orbital space flight and we'll have Thinking Putty on board.

What are we going to do with this putty?  Well, we're going to mix it into a larger ball of Thinking Putty so that everyone can have their own Space Putty.  Does that sound like fun?