Science
Related: About this forumTwo MIT students just solved Richard Feynman's famed physics puzzle
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/two-mit-students-just-solved-richard-feynmans-famed-physics-puzzle/?BUT SCIENCE LOVES A GOOD CHALLENGE
The mystery remained unsolved until 2005, when French scientists Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch won an Ig Nobel Prize, an award given to scientists for real work which is of a less serious nature than the discoveries that win Nobel prizes, for finally determining why this happens. Their paper describing the effect is wonderfully funny to read, as it takes such a banal issue so seriously.
They demonstrated that when a rod is bent past a certain point, such as when spaghetti is snapped in half by bending it at the ends, a snapback effect is created. This causes energy to reverberate from the initial break to other parts of the rod, often leading to a second break elsewhere.
While this settled the issue of why spaghetti noodles break into three or more pieces, it didnt establish if they always had to break this way. The question of if the snapback could be regulated remained unsettled.
Read the article...
NNadir
(34,336 posts)..."Lord Rayleigh's" consideration of the sound of bubbles: I just stumbled into a very old paper by "Lord Rayleigh" contemplating water boiling in a pot.
Rayleigh's work on bubbles ended up being very important to engineering.
I haven't looked at the article, and I have no idea why spaghetti breaks into three pieces, but I would not be surprised if it turned out to have important implications.
underpants
(185,984 posts)Good read.
Turbineguy
(38,210 posts)linguine?
Response to Sancho (Original post)
jfz9580m This message was self-deleted by its author.
scipan
(2,602 posts)Also, this hit my funny bone:
Having solved the problem of how to properly break spaghetti, they plan to focus on linguine next.
They may spend their whole careers on this!
Sancho
(9,088 posts)...my wife already knows I'm crazy. I told her it was a new recipe from the internet.
ps: she didn't believe me