Simply Harmonic Jello Fun Physics for Thanksgiving

November 23, 2010

Posted by admin in : Acoustics (ACOU), Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
(CMMP), History, Policy and Education (HPE), Physics Education Research (PER) ,
add a comment
Jello is fun and delicious any time of year, and everyone has seen it wiggling and
jiggling. With a simple stopwatch and counting the frequency of the wiggles, serving
jello brings up a special opportunity to work a physics experiment into your snack and
dinner menu.
Those wiggles and jiggles can be described as simple harmonic motion, i.e., the force
causing the displacement (motion) is proportional to the displacement itself, .
Consider a square block of wiggling jello on a flat plate. If the jello is set into vibrating
motion by a shear force that acts on the top of the jello, static friction will keep the
bottom of the jello fixed in place on the plate. The displacement (or deformation) of the
top of the jello due to the shear force is some distance, . This displacement divided by
the original dimension is called the shear strain.

From Giancoli, Physics for Scientists and Engineers
If you measure the wiggling rate, i.e., count the number of back and forth excursions per
unit time, this frequency can be related to the a physical property of the jello called the
shear modulus.
The shear modulus, relates the shear force, , and shear strain, by
or
where is the area of the top of the block.
Because the center of mass oscillates with half the displacement of the top,
,
and the effective force constant is given by
.
The frequency of the vibrations for any simple harmonic oscillator is

where is the mass oscillating object, in this case the piece of jello. The piece of jello
can be weighed directly (converting from weight to mass) or given by the density of the
jello multiplied by its volume .
So the wiggling frequency of jello is or .
Thus the shear modulus of jello can be determined from the measured vibrational
frequency by .
You can try this experiment at home and even study how the shear modulus changes with
how you make the jello, i.e., with water, vinegar, juice, soda, or alcohol. And you can
investigate how temperature changes the shear modulus.
Post your results here as a comment. Check back for updates and useful data.
Updates
Units? When doing any calculation in science it is important to keep in mind the units of
the factors in used in the equations. The units have to be consistent throughout, and the
final derived units of your calculation should be consistent with quantity that you are
trying to calculate. It is easy to mix up units if you make length measurements using
English units, and mass measurements in the metric system for example. Even when
using the metric system throughout, one could easily make the mistake of mixing CGS
units with MKS units. Always check your units.
The density of jello? Understanding what jello is and how it is made is an interesting
lesson in biochemistry, particularly protein structure and function.
The more general name for jello is gelatin. (Jell-0 is a brand name for the foodstuff
edible gelatin that has become synonymous with the food itself.) Gelatin is made from
the connective tissue proteins of cows or pigs. It is made first by breaking down the
cellular structure of the connective tissues. Then collagen proteins from these tissues are
isolated, denatured and subsequently rendered to a powdered form. Sweeteners,
flavoring agents, dyes and other additives are added to this powder to make the familiar
gelatin dessert. To make jello you have to add boiling water to the powder which dis-
aggregates the proteins. Cooling the mixture re-aggregates the proteins. The final jello
mold will be a complex solid mixture of proteins, water, air, and chemical additives.
This leads us to consider the density of jello, which like the biological tissue from which
it comes, is mostly water.
Waters density is . So the density has to be close to water. But the
various additives result in partial molar volumes that contract or expand the total
volume. The final volume depends on the thermodynamic nature of the additives and
their relative concentrations. So while it is easy to think that in any given volume of jello
there are constituents that are heavier than water, and that the density should be greater
than , the complex mixture of additives could result in the overall density being
less than . The most prudent thing to do is to take a well measured cube of jello,
calculate its volume (or use volume displacement), weigh it, then calculate its density.
Reported densities for jello have ranged from (with sugar-free
variants being on the low end), while for scientific gelatin (without all the food additives)
the density has been reported to be .