How To: Make DIY Magentic Silly Putty

What’s more fun than stretching an egg of silly putty, forming all kinds of weird orbs, cracking bubbles, and squishy shapes?

Goofing around with DIY magnetic silly putty, and encouraging it to behave all crazylike by pushing and stretching it with the power of the poles!  

Mikeasaurus figured out a way to add ferric iron oxide powder, an art store staple, to manufactured silly putty, a toy store staple, to create this awesome gooey black and lively magnetic substance.

I’ll let him explain the science:

Thinking Putty (also known as Silly Putty) is a silicone polymer children’s toy. Silly putty is fun because it has some unique properties: it is viscoelastic, meaning it can be stretched and shaped and mashed back together again; and as its apparent viscosity increases directly with respect to the amount of force applied (read: it can be torn or shattered with impact). Silly putty is a non-Newtonian viscoelastic polymer, better characterized as a dilatant fluid. Also, it bounces.

Awesome, right? It’ll be even cooler if one could make the putty itself from scratch. There’s gotta be a tutorial somewhere…

Yup, here it is.

DIY Magnetic Putty [Instructables]