I have 2 cylinders made from different polymers. Both cylinders are made to 'accept' the same volume of water. When I fill cylinder 1 it is subjectively stiff while cylinder 2 is subjectively floppy. I would like to objectively quantify this subjective difference - what suggestions would you have?
1 Answer
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Place a glass rod against the cylinder at right angles. Observe the size of the contact patch - the length of the patch should be easy to measure through the glass rod. Make sure that the contact force (weight of the rod) is the same in both cases.
You will be able to see that one cylinder deforms more (larger patch) than the other. That makes a objective quantification (although translating that into meaningful units might be hard - but that wasn't your question).
