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Mathematicians Solve Age-Old Spaghetti Mystery (sciencedaily.com)
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.
The link doesn't even go to the right journal - it goes to a paper in Nature when it says it is a PNAS paper - and the paper doesn't have anything to do with bending any kind of rod. The correct paper is Controlling fracture cascades through twisting and quenching.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Did they try doing it underwater, or burying it in sand? That might damp the wave.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Smarter Every Day covered spaghetti snapping into 3 pieces. Had to go all the way up to 250,000 fps to see what was happening.
With 5 pieces of angel hair spaghetti without twisting my results were as follows. 1st break was into 2 pieces, 2nd break was into 3 pieces, 3rd break was into 2 pieces, 4th break was into 4 or more pieces, 5th break was into 2 pieces. So, 2 out of 5 into 2 pieces without trying to twist.
Never have I wanted to volunteer for a study so much! Seriously, it seems like common sense - the snap-back effect. And of course, if you apply torque the rotation will blunt the snap-back. But don't even get me started about the sauce,
Some settling may occur during posting.
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.
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...you grip it at the center with both hands and snap. This is talking about grabbing the ends to snap, not the middle.
IG Nobel is for papers that are silly and pointless etc.
Don't confuse it with the Nobel prize.
Also, this theory is the very first one, anyone would come up, to answer this. I guessed it right, just before reading it. Like probably every single person here. ... is there REALLY *nothing* more important to do? ... or even just common diseases.
Nice that they did check if that is true, but
You know... like solving overpopulation or people becoming psychopathic assholes
Real people roll their own.
Dough you knot understand?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How do you not bend spaghetti evenly from both ends? Is this one of those one hand clapping koans?
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I am not a physicist, nor do I work in anything like construction (or even the material world most of the time), but as soon as I read the first sentence, I thought, "Just twist it first."
Maybe I'm so sort of idiot savant physicist, or maybe just a lucky idiot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Whenever making pasta, I'd always twist and bend a bundle at the same time to make 2 roughly even halves. It's kinda funny to think my younger self could've saved them time.
Will this make a bistromathic drive possible?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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.
#DeleteChrome
Broke my ankle (tibia) and subsequently broke my fibula with a 'twisting' motion of the bone, causing it to break in two just like a pencil (or noodle). Pointed ends and all (which were most uncomfortable as they ripped into my muscle).
RRK
Kinda fun-sounding science, but frankly this sounds like something someone who is stoned would start doing, sitting there for hours on end, breaking pieces of dry spaghetti, one at a time.
Chuck Norris can break an entire box of spaghetti into just two pieces.
What's with the '39 behind Feynman's name? The year he received his Bachelors? That seems oddly pedantic and irrelevant.? Other explainations
He could have $200k grand and a PhD, but no... he chose to make a simple video.
this sickens me.
Oh wait.. thanks.
I just tried it. Snapped right in two. I tried 3 more and all the same. None broke in to more than two pieces.
Barillia Whole Wheat spaghetti.
Wonder how much taxpayers paid for that!
(sound of forks clinking on plates) ...mmm ...with math!
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)
I'd wager has has far north of $200k plus the PhD. Plus he got the chance to sit down with the president for a 1 on 1 about science education. Pretty solid cred if you ask me. Did you watch the video? It digs into the very science we are discussing.
The hour it takes to make your own is worth more than the 49 cents a box of store noodles cost. If I want 5 star quality food, I go to a 5 star restaurant.
Funded this and how did it take MIT guys to figure it out?
Ask literally anyone who knows a few things about historical weapons and they'll tell you what's happening.
#1 Ever seen a thin sword breaking into multiple pieces in slow-mo? It usually breaks at one initial high-stress bend point, then the whiplash effect from the blade springing back often throws another smaller chunk off. The two breaks may even be separately visible without slowing it down, but obviously it's not a good idea to be looking when it happens.
#2 Traditional wooden bows.
Draw the arrow back and release it immediately. The shot is measurably faster than drawing it back and holding it for a minute.
The material in the bow starts to fatigue and deform slightly under stress and you lose a little shot energy the more cell walls give out.
Bend a piece of spaghetti *slowly* and surprise! It's probably going to break in two. The energy that would normally whiplash those two pieces into three was wasted on tiny inelastic deformations in the material instead of springy elastic ones.
when you put two of your fingers close to each other and not at the ends. Or if the spaghetti piece in question is just as long as two thumbs.
Wow it took MIT 12 years to come up with the answer I already had. About 20 years ago a teacher told the class about the spaghetti mystery. We broke spaghetti in class and it always broke in 3 or 4 pieces. I was so intrigued by this I went home that night and went through 2 boxes of spaghetti when I figured out that twisting them a bit would make them break in half. I was so excited about the discovery we talked about it in class the next day. If I would have known this was a thing...I would have written it down and sent it in. All my classmates and the Teacher just gave it a wow factor and class went on. SMH!
These people have a lot of free time.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
... you heathens need to stop this sacrilegious torture at once, or the almighty will strike you down with his noodley appendage!
Your mom paid me. Does that count?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Damn, that true?
APK, I want to install your host file program, where can I download it? And is it any good?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Seriously, wtf? Of all the problems in the world today that need to be solved, we have some of the brightest minds wasting their time breaking spaghetti?
Priorities, people...
$200k grand is 200,000 thousand. That's $200 million. So you are correct, it is far north of $200k!
It's about time, but I'm glad they banned him!
If I'd realized someone was trying to solve this problem I could have helped out. I've been snapping spaghetti in this manner for as long as I can remember sans fancy rig.
DO NOT!
I repeat do NOT eat age old spaghetti.
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?
-Dave
yeah, I saw the video, a well-done one.
I meant to say "grant"
excuse my ignorance.