Answer 1:
Before I can talk about how the
asthenosphere and oobleck are different, I
first have to talk about how they're
similar. Both substances do not behave like
ordinary fluids: they either grow stronger or
weaker when we stress them more.
The first difference is oobleck will strengthen
when you deform it, which is why you can smash
oobleck with a hammer. We call an oobleck-like
fluid a shear-thickening fluid. The
asthenosphere, although it moves slowly, actually
becomes weaker with greater stress; it's a
shear thinning fluid on long timescales.
The other big difference is the obvious one.
The asthenosphere is much, much more viscous
than oobleck. But . . .
Hypothetically speaking, what if we had
super-oobleck which was immune to chemical
changes? If we could shear it fast enough it
would end up being even stronger than the
asthenosphere!
Here is also a nice video on understanding the
basic physics behind oobleck and some other
colloidal materials:
oobleck revealed
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