The Future of Rheology is Now

Participants at this year’s Annual Meeting of The Society of Rheology were invited to participate in a drawing at Anton Paar’s booth that promised them the future of rheology. This was not an exaggeration: the prize was an MCR 702 TwinDrive™, the world’s most accurate rheometer, covering all past, present and future applications in rheology. The proud winner of the drawing was Prof. Kendra Erk, PhD, of Purdue University.

There was a sound of drumrolls in the air before this year’s Annual Meeting of The Society of Rheology – a big event was announced among rheology professionals planning to attend this conference, the 86th edition, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from October 5 to 9, 2014. The Annual Meeting of The Society of Rheology has become the event of choice for anyone involved in rheological investigation, from academic, industrial and governmental institutions around the world. This year, they were all told that “the future could be theirs” – and that all they had to do was visit Anton Paar’s booth at the event.

The future of rheology, proudly presented by Anton Paar, comes in the form of the ground-breaking MCR 702 TwinDrive™ rheometer. Simply put, this is the world’s most accurate and versatile rheometer. The key: two synchronous EC motors arranged in a perfectly balanced, highly accurate setup. Based on this TwinDrive™ technology, MCR 702 is the first rheometer ever to precisely cover all possible rheological applications – past, present and future. It can be employed in several test modes, from separate motor-transducer operation all the way to unprecedented counter-oscillation and much more. This truly opens up countless paths for rheological innovation.

To celebrate this new array of possibilities, Anton Paar arranged a drawing called “The Future Can Be Yours Now”, inviting all attendees at the Society of Rheology meeting to register. The prize: a brand-new MCR 702 TwinDrive™. A big win indeed, at a value of $200,000. The drawing was met with great response, elevating the success of the conference in general, which was already brimming with a record breaking number of attendees, papers and posters.

The most exciting moment of the drawing: Prof. Kendra Erk, PhD, of Purdue University in Indiana, was asked to draw the lucky winner – and actually drew her own entry form, much to her complete surprise and delight. So Ms. Erk, an assistant professor in the School of Materials Engineering, is now the proud owner of an MCR 702 TwinDrive™, a universally applicable rheological tool which will help her go further in doing the scientific work of tomorrow. Prof. Erk’s research group is investigating relationships between structure and property in a wide range of soft materials and complex fluids, from hydrogels to surfactant-stabilized emulsions. Having the TwinDrive™ system at her group’s disposal opens up entirely new possibilities regarding microscopical structure analysis, measurements at lowest torques and much more.