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Pancake Physics to Cut Batter Splatter
Anonymous Coward writes "The headline just about says it all on this one. A physics grad student in the UK has come up with the mathematical formula for how to flip a pancake and have it land correctly back in the pan. The BBC
has the details."
Americans should bear in mind that what are called "pancakes" in England are called "crepes" in America. What are called "pancakes" in America are called "Scotch pancakes" in the south of England, and "drop scones" in Scotland and the north of England. Meanwhile, "flapjacks" are a kind of oaty biscuit. Confused yet?
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
Not sure about other countries but last Tuesday (4th) was Shrove Tuesday in the UK when we all make pancakes. For the religious amongst you the word 'Shrove' refers to the practice of confessing of sins, then afterwards the fast of Lent could be considered a penance of faults committed. Thats why the BBC ran the story on Tuesday. However, most of us just love eating the pancakes!
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
Heh. I'm a line cook here in the US and there is quite a bit more to flipping American Pancakes (I realize english pancakes are somewhat different).
Stuff like how long you wait till you flip it, the perfect angle to get the spatula underneath the pancake (directly parallel to both the grill and the pancake), what to do with blueberry/raspberry/banana/etc pancakes, what to do when the cake sticks, and the rest. I'm sure you could come up with an equation to perfectly predict this and it wouldn't mean a damm thing -- like this one.
I mean you could equally use a formula to try and tell somebody how to flip eggs and it wouldn't meen a damm thing. To train line cooks to flip the proper, and perfect, Over Easy egg requires about 100-200 wasted eggs until you get it down to about 95% of the time -- and that extra 5% is a pain since each egg varies in how much force will require before it breaks, etc and usually requires thousands of eggs before you can go nearly an entire 8 hour shift without breaking at least 1 yolk open. By 'flip' an egg I mean using only your wrist, no sissy spatulas involved. It takes alot of work and effort to learn to do these things which is why almost nobody outside cooks can probably cook eggs or omeletes the *right way*, no spatulas/informercial specials involved.
I think you meant:
In Heaven, the police are British, the lovers are Italian, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, and it's all organized by the Swiss.
In Hell, the police are German, the lovers are Swiss, the cooks are British, the engineers are French, and it's all organized by the Italians.
We are having a rest after inventing democracy (o/s for civilisation), the English language (o/s for culture and arguably thinking), Football (conflict resolution and war emulation) and Cricket (cultural add-on for massively-scalar beer drinking in the park).
Falling cats are famously able to turn around and land on their feet. Unless the height of the fall is too large, the cat has no problems with that. I forgot the exact conditions of falling cats, but they are able to turn around in a fall in a lot less than the 30 inches down from a table.
If the two were to be combined and the cat has a piece of bread strapped to it, it is the cat that prevails, being more active, heavier, and having a larger moment of inertia.
I'd imagine that the same would apply to pancakes, and I have disregarded the risk of the cat eating the food.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
hmm . . . I notice that this formula does not factor in mass of the pancake. this makes me wonder, being not-so-smart in physics, would this formula apply for any size pancake?? and how about objects other than pancakes? could I flip say, a thanksgiving turkey and still have it land perfectly in the pan, using this formula??
and why do Scots like cheese in their pancakes?? don't they know the proper way to do anything is the American way, i.e. sugar and syrup??
Bored and tired minds want to know!!
All I ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
Well, where I come from, we don't use no spatulas to toss pancakes... (Although some more cautious people do slip them out of the pan onto a plate, then drop them back in upside down.) English pancakes are so wide and thin that a spatula's likely to just tear them. Instead you have to use the showing-off-method.
;-)
First you make a circular movement with the pan to ensure that the pancake hasn't stuck and overcome static friction.
Then you tilt the end of the pan down slightly and make a short, sharp inward movement, to get the pancake sliding outwards.
Then you sharply flick the pan up, so that the pancake goes between one and two feet in the air (more if you're feeling cocky) and also spins enough that it lands in the pan the other way up.
I'll be very impressed if they invent a machine which can repeatably toss pancakes. There are an awful lot of variables, which he seems to ignore. But then he is a physicist, not an engineer.
I asked a (native) British collegue about it, and this was his reply:
Ahh the wonders of pancacke day or as the French call it Mardi Gras Fat tuesday. This is the day before the start of Lent (crazy Christian starvation festival, preparing mind and body for the Easter celebrations etc). Typically people used to use up all their fatty things on this day such as butter, eggs and lard etc, coz it was not the done thing to be eating lard cakes when everybody else was eating celery.
Thus the pancake tradition started. Of course, all the religous nonsense has largely disappeared but the pancakes remain in British Culture.
As far as the tossing equation goes, thats just the work of a whacked out English ale swilling academics, and is an essential part of British inventiveness and ingenuity. (You can't make great discoveries all of the time)
Hope that helps and thank you for your interest in Britain.
:-)
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
I do believe it is time that someone introduced Europe to the concept of the 'spatula'. We sort a solved this whole pancakes on the floor dilehma a looooooooong time ago . . .
You know what? While we're at it, let's give China forks and spoons.