Rheology of an overheated waterbottle (with stickers)

Last fall, when I was out backpacking in Dolly Sods, we left one of Lily’s water bottles on the dashboard of the locked (and windows-rolled-up) Subaru. When we got back to the car, we found it had experienced heterogeneous solid-state deformation. I took a few photos, so that those of you who are interested in rock deformation could ponder them as analogues for the contrasting styles of deformation we see in geologic structures.

I find the different responses by the different stickers to be intriguing. The GigaPan sticker is stiff and strong (or had really weak adhesive) and survived relatively unscathed. The self-similarity of the crinkles on the pink Whitegrass sticker really catch my eye. I also find it interesting that those wrinkles “start off” orthogonal to the edge of the sticker on its squared edges, and then deviate from perpendicular as they “propagate” towards the center area of the sticker. The 13.1 sticker provides a nice example of differential strain – part of it is essentially undeformed because it’s stuck to the surface of the tough GigaPan sticker, while the other half (stuck to the bottle) is crinkled and shriveled up. This difference has nothing to do with the rheology of the 13.1 sticker, and everything to do with the “luck” of where it finds itself relative to surrounding deformation.