I've had some pretty harsh words for corn in my time, but corn is not all bad. It gives us cornstarch, which in turn allows researchers in Texas to discover bizarre behaviour in a vertically-vibrated mixture of cornstarch and water. Via the AIP's Physics News Update (#684):

PERSISTENT HOLES have been observed in a shaken fluid. Normally, a fluid takes the shape of its container; any puncture of the surface will quickly fill. However, in an experiment performed at the University of Texas by Florian Merkt, Robert Deegan, and Erin Rericha, a mixture of cornstarch and water is vertically vibrated at frequencies as high as 120 Hz, with accelerations in the range 12g-25g, where g is the gravitational acceleration. If a stick or puff of air is used to poke a hole in the fluid, the researchers found that the hole can persist indefinitely, with a characteristic diameter comparable to the depth of the fluid and extending to the bottom of the container. This is quite surprising--a hole produced in a similar way in ordinary fluids or in the cornstarch mixture at rest quickly collapses. The holes in cornstarch can survive as long as the shaking persists and can move around, coalesce, annihilate, or even scatter. (Pictures and movie at http://chaos.ph.utexas.edu/research/vibrated_cornstarch.htm; be sure to watch to the end) As yet the physics behind the persistent holes cannot be explained. (Merkt et al. Physical Review Letters, 7 May 2004; Contact Harry Swinney, swinney@chaos.ph.utexas.edu, 512-471-4619.)

Follow that link; watch that movie. And do watch it to the end: it is severely cool. One might even say trippy. At the end these 'finger' formations start appearing on the surface as the persistent holes delocalise, and it's just about the most bizarre thing I've seen since some other time. It's like the cornstarch starts growing tentacles. Just like Octopus Jesus.