{"id":221399,"date":"2025-09-04T04:25:39","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T09:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/soft-materials-hold-onto-memories-of-their-past-for-longer-than-previously-thought"},"modified":"2025-09-04T04:25:39","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T09:25:39","slug":"soft-materials-hold-onto-memories-of-their-past-for-longer-than-previously-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/soft-materials-hold-onto-memories-of-their-past-for-longer-than-previously-thought","title":{"rendered":"Soft materials hold onto \u2018memories\u2019 of their past for longer than previously thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/soft-materials-hold-onto-memories-of-their-past-for-longer-than-previously-thought.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If your hand lotion is a bit runnier than usual coming out of the bottle, it might have something to do with the goop\u2019s \u201cmechanical memory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Soft gels and lotions are made by mixing ingredients until they form a stable and uniform substance. But even after a gel has set, it can hold onto \u201cmemories,\u201d or residual stress, from the mixing process. Over time, the material can give in to these embedded stresses and slide back into its former, premixed state. Mechanical memory is, in part, why hand lotion separates and gets runny over time.<\/p>\n<p>Now, an MIT engineer has devised a simple way to measure the degree of residual stress in soft materials after they have been mixed, and found that common products like hair gel and shaving cream have longer mechanical memories, holding onto residual stresses for longer periods of time than manufacturers might have assumed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If your hand lotion is a bit runnier than usual coming out of the bottle, it might have something to do with the goop\u2019s \u201cmechanical memory.\u201d Soft gels and lotions are made by mixing ingredients until they form a stable and uniform substance. But even after a gel has set, it can hold onto \u201cmemories,\u201d [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}