Ian: How did you dream up the putty disco moves?

Crazy Aaron: What are the disco moves?

Dr. Gwynette So, I was in the toy store and I saw the magnet and you figured out that you could make the putty dance.

Crazy Aaron: I gotcha. Oh, I have some magnetic putty.

Crazy Aaron: And this is not a production putty. This was something I was fiddling around with, but it is magnetic. It’s a little shinier than our regular magnetic putty. I hope I’m not giving away any putty secrets, right?

Crazy Aaron: But I have my magnet here. And so as you can see, it holds. And then we can go against gravity. And now right now I’m dancing, I’m doing the disco moves. I’ve never heard them called disco moves before, but I get it. I totally see it, right?

Crazy Aaron: So you’re just creating and inventing right now.

Crazy Aaron: So how did I do this? Well, once I was able to make the putty magnetic, I just went back to that free association and playing around and just getting my hands on it, and trying not to have preconceived ideas of what I should do and just let it happen.

Crazy Aaron: And the other way, inventing that way, is to just give it to a kid, right? Because kids don’t have preconceived ideas and they’ll just try anything. And usually just watching them play. They may not do the thing, but they’ll give you that angle, that idea, that different way of thinking for you to say, “give me that back, I’m going to try something.” And there you have it.

Evan: What makes the putty magnetic? I’m just curious.

Crazy Aaron: Sure. Our putty actually has millions of microscopic magnets inside. And then the fluid is designed in a way that it holds them all in position because they’ll want to attract to each other. And we don’t want that. We want them to stay throughout the whole material, but at the same time, it allows them to move and pivot their magnetic field so that they’ll respond to the magnet and take the putty along with them. It’s a bit of a trick, but it works.

Evan: That’s cool.

Dr. Gwynette I want to even go as far as to say it’s mind blowing. I’ve remember seeing one where he could take it and it actually would twist in a twirl.

Crazy Aaron: We can do that. We can do the twist. So the way you do the twist is you take it and now we’re going to line up the magnetic field. So all of the microscopic magnets are now facing the south pole, this magnet. So they are aligned to north because north attracts itself. And then I’m going to rotate the magnet, and I flip it upside down. And now I can twist and then I can untwist.

Evan: That’s cool. How’d you come up with that?

Crazy Aaron: One day I was standing around, demonstrating the magnetic putty and I just did it. And then I realized it would work.

Evan: Okay.

Crazy Aaron: It just happened.