Viscosity of cooking oil: From kitchen to classroom

Endre Joachim Lerheim Mossige

Viscosity of cooking oil: From kitchen to classroom

Physics Education 2026-07-02 v1

Authors: Endre Joachim Lerheim Mossige

Abstract

This paper presents a fun and relatable classroom experiment to measure the viscosity of cooking oil using household tools and ingredients like kitchen scales, mugs, and dried peas. The experiment requires no formal training in math or physics, and helps to build intuition about friction, Newton's laws of motion, and Archimedes' buoyancy law.

Keywords

physics education viscosity measurement cooking oil classroom experiment newton's laws archimedes' principle

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.02625,
  title  = {Viscosity of cooking oil: From kitchen to classroom},
  author = {Endre Joachim Lerheim Mossige},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.02625},
  year   = {2026}
}