Fluid Physics

Whipped cream and the filling for pumpkin pie are two familiar materials that exhibit the shear-thinning effect seen in a range of industrial applications. It is thick enough to stand on its own atop a piece of pie, yet flows readily when pushed through a tube. This demonstrates the shear-thinning effect that was studied with the Critical Viscosity of Xenon Experiment (CVX-2) on the STS-107 Research 1 mission in 2002. CVX observed the behavior of xenon, a heavy inert gas used in flash lamps and ion rocket engines, at its critical point. The principal investigator was Dr. Robert Berg of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD.