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Corn Starch Serves As Pothole Fix

Updated: Monday, April 16 2012, 08:44 AM CDT
Imagine this, something from your kitchen cabinet can be used to patch potholes. This is not a permanent fix by any means, but it could save your car from being damaged by running into a pot hole today.
   
Cornstarch has an interesting property. You can't compress it.  It fights back. You’ve seen the YouTube videos where a cornstarch mixture is poured into a loudspeaker cone. When the music starts playing, the mixture starts dancing. The vibration of the music causes the mixture to solidify.
   
Some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland liked what they saw and thought—If a simple force like a vibrating speaker can change the properties of cornstarch what would happen with a larger force… say… running over it with a car?

They filled large waterproof bags with a cornstarch solution and dropped the mixture a pot hole and just covered it with a mat so that the cars wouldn't be scared to run over it. They let 100 cars run over it and the cars didn't know the difference.
   
Why does it work? The weight of the car actually changes the cornstarch from a liquid to a solid.

Again, this is not a permanent fix... But it's certainly a cheap fix that road crews can drop into place until they have a chance to fix it right.


Links:

Dancing Cornstarch  
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zoTKXXNQIU

Cornstarch Road Fix
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XrvzZewPUJA
Corn Starch Serves As Pothole Fix