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posted by mrpg on Friday August 17 2018, @02:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the bene dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Pasta purists insist on plonking dry spaghetti into the boiling pot whole, but should you rebel against convention and try to break the strands in half, you'll probably end up with a mess of scattered pieces.

[...] It wasn't until 2006 that a pair of French physicists successfully explained the dynamics at work and solved the mystery. They found that, counterintuitively, a spaghetti strand produces a "kick back" traveling wave as it breaks. This wave temporarily increases the curvature in other sections, leading to many more breaks.

[...] This isn't just fun and games for the sake of idle curiosity (not that there's anything wrong with that). A collaboration between Audoly and Columbia University computer scientist Eitan Grinspun led to developing an Adobe paint brush that bends and moves, introduced in Adobe Illustrator 5 and Adobe Paint Brush 5. The MIT scientists say their new work could be used to better understand how cracks form and spread in similarly structured materials and brittle structures—bridge spans, for instance, or human bones. The secret could lie in the pasta.

Source: MIT scientists crack the case of breaking spaghetti in two


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by arslan on Friday August 17 2018, @03:46AM

    by arslan (3462) on Friday August 17 2018, @03:46AM (#722683)

    My fellow pastafarians, dry pasta is a ultimate puzzle bestowed upon us by the holiest of holy FSM wherein lies the answer to life, the universe and everything. In it lies the question to the answer 42. This discovery is but the tip of the iceberg.

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