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Two mechanical engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a model to describe the curling action of a spaghetti noodle when it is boiled.
[...] Anyone who has ever boiled a pot of spaghetti noodles knows that the noodles transition from hard and brittle to soft and bendable, and the noodles tend to curl when cooked. Goldberg and O'Reilly noted that prior research had shown that spaghetti noodles tend to bend in a predictable way when placed in a pot of boiling water. They start out as straight rods and then as they begin to absorb water, they start to sag. As the sagging continues, they continue bending, and eventually, the top part of the noodle will bend inward, with each noodle forming a U shape. The researchers wondered what was behind the extra bit of bending. They assumed gravity played a role—and it seemed likely that the noodle's elasticity played a role, as well.
Everyone knows inverse quantum effects are at work: spaghetti noodles won't cook as long as you observe them.
Journal Reference:
Nathaniel N. Goldberg et al. Mechanics-based model for the cooking-induced deformation of spaghetti, Physical Review E (2020). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.101.013001
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday January 10 2020, @01:37PM
As the summary states, they put it in a pot. Indeed, as far as I remember, your post is the first time I've heard of anyone cooking them in a pan. Not that anything is wrong with doing so, it's just that I've never heard of anyone doing it.
Since spaghetti are too long to lie flat even in a large pot, they will inevitably lay slanted, and therefore bend when getting soft. Actually I usually physically enforce that process (by stirring with a fork) so that the time that part of the spaghetti is outside of the water is minimized.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.