The History of Rheology

The study of peanut butter falls under rheology because of its unusual fluidity.

Rheology is the study of the deformation and flow of materials that are nonclassical and behave in unusual and interesting ways. An example of a classical material would be water; nonclassical materials include peanut butter, rubber, plastic and pastes.

Before 1929

Although rheology was not an official branch of physics until 1929, many scientists and specialists contributed to study of unusual materials before 1929. For example, Archimedes of Syracuse (around 250 BCE) and Isaac Newton (1687) both contributed to the study of ideal materials.

Rheology

In 1929, Eugene Bingham wanted to create a branch of physics that specifically dealt with problems pertaining to unusual liquids and solids. After consulting a language professor, Bingham went with "rheo" taken from Greek, meaning "everything flows" and "-ology" meaning "the study of."

Modern Rheology

Rheology, after its conception and with the inclusion of new fields such as computational science, has created a branch of physics that overlaps with many other fields, such as thermodynamics, reaction engineering and thermodynamics. Rheology also has applications in magneto-rheological fluids and nano-composites.

References

• The Origins of Rheology: A Short Historical Excursion
• College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison: What Is Rheology?
• "Physics Today"; The Deborah Number; M. Reiner; 1964

Resources

• The Industrial Physicist: What Is Rheology Anyway?