Mathematicians Solve Age-Old Spaghetti Mystery (sciencedaily.com) 73
If you happen to have a box of spaghetti in your pantry, try this experiment: Pull out a single spaghetti stick and hold it at both ends. Now bend it until it breaks. How many fragments did you make? If the answer is three or more, pull out another stick and try again. Can you break the noodle in two? If not, you're in very good company. From a report: The spaghetti challenge has flummoxed even the likes of famed physicist Richard Feynman '39, who once spent a good portion of an evening breaking pasta and looking for a theoretical explanation for why the sticks refused to snap in two. Feynman's kitchen experiment remained unresolved until 2005, when physicists from France pieced together a theory to describe the forces at work when spaghetti -- and any long, thin rod -- is bent. They found that when a stick is bent evenly from both ends, it will break near the center, where it is most curved. This initial break triggers a "snap-back" effect and a bending wave, or vibration, that further fractures the stick. Their theory, which won the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize, seemed to solve Feynman's puzzle. But a question remained: Could spaghetti ever be coerced to break in two?
The answer, according to a new MIT study, is yes -- with a twist. In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report that they have found a way to break spaghetti in two, by both bending and twisting the dry noodles. They carried out experiments with hundreds of spaghetti sticks, bending and twisting them with an apparatus they built specifically for the task. The team found that if a stick is twisted past a certain critical degree, then slowly bent in half, it will, against all odds, break in two. The researchers say the results may have applications beyond culinary curiosities, such as enhancing the understanding of crack formation and how to control fractures in other rod-like materials such as multifiber structures, engineered nanotubes, or even microtubules in cells.
The answer, according to a new MIT study, is yes -- with a twist. In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report that they have found a way to break spaghetti in two, by both bending and twisting the dry noodles. They carried out experiments with hundreds of spaghetti sticks, bending and twisting them with an apparatus they built specifically for the task. The team found that if a stick is twisted past a certain critical degree, then slowly bent in half, it will, against all odds, break in two. The researchers say the results may have applications beyond culinary curiosities, such as enhancing the understanding of crack formation and how to control fractures in other rod-like materials such as multifiber structures, engineered nanotubes, or even microtubules in cells.
Wrong paper (Score:5, Informative)
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That's the real news. We should submit that as an article here!
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Frosti pasto (Score:3)
Did they try doing it underwater, or burying it in sand? That might damp the wave.
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Re:Frosti pasto (Score:4, Funny)
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This one sounds like an Iggy Prize to be proud of; just for the amusement factor, if nothing else. :D
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Your mom paid me. Does that count?
Smarter Every Day covered 3 piece breaks in slo-mo (Score:5, Informative)
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He could have $200k grand and a PhD, but no... he chose to make a simple video.
this sickens me.
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I meant to say "grant"
excuse my ignorance.
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yeah, I saw the video, a well-done one.
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Damn, that true?
APK, I want to install your host file program, where can I download it? And is it any good?
Yes! (Score:1)
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Wait, this was a mystery? (Score:2)
I've been able to snap spaghetti in two for ages, parents of small children around the world have known for ages. I didn't even know it was a problem.
Because, if you are like most people... (Score:2)
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I can also throw a pumpkin over a 1 story house, walk on water and hit a golf ball over a half mile (all of those are super easy by the way, but I wonder if anyone from MIT can figure them out with just common sense).
Trebuchet, trebuchet, and trebuchet?
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Small pumpkin (like baseball size), small house. No problem.
Pour cup of water on sidewalk. Now walk on it. You're "walking on water".
???
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Oh, all 3 can be solved by adding a hill (or cliff) to the set-up, if you want to be serious about it. But punkin chunkin is way more fun.
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I can jump higher than the average house.
Re: Because, if you are like most people... (Score:2)
Most people can.
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Shhhhh... Don't give away the secret. :p
I make my spaghetti by hand you insensitive clod! (Score:3)
Real people roll their own.
Dough you knot understand?
How do you *not* bend it evenly? (Score:2)
How do you not bend spaghetti evenly from both ends? Is this one of those one hand clapping koans?
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How do you not bend spaghetti evenly from both ends? Is this one of those one hand clapping koans?
Take a stick of spaghetti into outer space and in weightlessness with no atmosphere shake it like a conductors baton. The energy imparted to the end of the pasta will cause the stick to bend progressively in a wave. If the energy in a shake is at frequencies the stick will break at the harmonic nodes of the frequency in relation to the mass/length of the pasta. In space a whole forest of pasta trees can fall and no one will hear them break.
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Yes, but you're ignoring all the small pieces that break near the site of the main break (and fall into the boiling water).
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Otherwise, you wouldn't have saved them any time.
Important Question... (Score:2)
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The solution is obvious (Score:5, Funny)
I always get two perfect halves when I do the following - it's easy.
1) bind the spaghetti together into a tight bundle, using a couple rubber bands. Be sure both rubber bands are fairly close to the center of the bundle.
2) Run the bundle through a band saw.
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To quote Wile E. Coyote...
ouch. [youtube.com]
Dry pasta as a 'fry toy' (Score:2)
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Whole wheat pasta tends to be more noodly even in it's dry form, it's probably more elastic and the shock waves dissipate quicker after the first crack.
As for twisting, it puts different tension into the pasta that changes the harmonics upon snapping.
solving the "spaghetti mystery" (Score:2)
Frank: Whelp, looks like we solved the "spaghetti mystery".
Joe: How about we solve the "cheeseburger mystery" next week?
Bob: (trying to talk with a full mouth)
If I would have known this was a thing... (Score:1)
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no, actually the point is that even Richard Fucking Feynmann didn't figure out the twist, forget about modeling when your brain can't even go outside the pasta snapping box that far.
Should Have Done Research (Score:2)
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Sigh.
Allow me to explain once again.
Intellectual puzzles like this lead to real-world mathematics that gets incorporated into huge things like engineering tables and safety laws, that translate to real-world buildings, runways, etc. that "work better" in some fashion than they otherwise would.
Why does a material, under stress, fracture elsewhere than the stress point? That seems to me to be an incredibly important thing to understand, especially if you're putting your main masses on those secondary/tertiar
I wished I'd known (Score:2)
Question (Score:2)
Physics is neat.
Also, why don't they make spaghetti smaller? Would people who make spaghetti in giant pots object to spaghetti sized for normal pots?