Hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) is commonly used as a viscosity modifier in many chemical systems, from paints to cement. HEC forms a physical gel in water due to the presence of hydrogen bonds and hydrophilic regions. When shear is imposed on the sytem, this network becomes stressed resulting in extension of the polymer chains and a consequential change in the polymer conformation parallel and perpendicular to the flow.We would like to understand how shear changes the conformation of the polymer in a colloidal suspension. With the long term goal of relating these changes in conformation to the observed changes in the rheological properties.