Announcing how to scientifically seek the perfect way to boil spaghetti
When boiling spaghetti of dried noodles, the time written on the package is referred to, but in reality the optimum boiling time changes depending on various conditions, so in order to make the boiled condition perfect, actually try eating spaghetti. , You will need a method such as
Swelling, softening, and elastocapillary adhesion of cooked pasta: Physics of Fluids: Vol 34, No 4
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0083696
How to tell if your spaghetti is perfectly done using just a simple ruler | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/03/how-to-tell-if-your-spaghetti-is-perfectly-done-using-just-a-simple-ruler/
The ingredient spaghetti is often the subject of physics experiments. The research that elucidated the physical law that 'spaghetti dried noodles always break into three or more' was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006. Furthermore, how to overcome this physical law and fold spaghetti in two was announced in a paper and became a hot topic.
Researchers succeeded in overcoming the phenomenon that 'spaghetti dried noodles always fold into 3 or more' --GIGAZINE
Sameh Tawfick, who belongs to UIUC's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, started researching spaghetti when the university was temporarily closed due to the influence of the new coronavirus infection and he decided to study at home. It seems that 'physical experiments that can be done in the kitchen' became a hot topic among scholars. Mr. Tawfick's laboratory was researching 'soft and long fibers' that can be applied to artificial muscles, so spaghetti was just right as an experimental material. 'Spaghetti is a long fiber from our point of view. We are studying the deformation, entanglement and adhesion of long fibers, and all these phenomena can be observed with spaghetti.'
Tawfick noted that when the boiled spaghetti was pulled out of the pan, 'how the bunch of spaghetti moves and sticks together', the boiled spaghetti sticks together because of the 'Cheerio effect'. I thought. The Cheerio effect is a phenomenon in which when you put an 'O' -shaped cereal Cheerio in a bowl and pour milk, the Cheerio floating in the milk stick to each other and eventually gather from the center to the edge of the bowl. If you look at the following movie, you can see what the Cheerio effect is like.
Cheerio effect-YouTube
This Cheerio effect is caused by the buoyancy and surface tension of the liquid, and the meniscus , which is a type of capillarity. Therefore, Tawfick set the research theme on the Cheerio effect and capillarity that work on spaghetti.
A research team led by Tawfick created a device with a 3D printer that can hold two dried De Cecco spaghetti noodles with a thickness of about 2 mm vertically at regular intervals. In addition, we prepared beakers containing distilled water and saline solution at 80 ° C and 100 ° C, and placed them on a table driven up and down by a motor. Then, while immersing the spaghetti attached to the device in the hot water of each beaker and taking a picture of it with a camera, the spaghetti strain (spaghetti swelling), elasticity (spaghetti softness), two pieces The length of the part where the spaghetti was not attached ( l s in the figure below) was measured.
As a result, it was found that the longer the heating time, the greater the strain of spaghetti. When it was put in water for 30 minutes and heated, the radius of the cross section of the spaghetti swelled to 1.7 times the original, and it became 100,000 times softer.
Also, since l s became shorter as the heating time became longer, Tawfick said, 'The length of the part where the spaghetti is not attached is the most effective index for estimating the boiled amount of spaghetti.' I'm discussing.
In the figure (a) below, you can see that the spaghetti boiled from the left for 0 minutes, 12 minutes, 18 minutes, 24 minutes, and 30 minutes, and the length of the non-sticked part, l s , is shortened. .. Figure (b) is a graph showing the results with l s on the vertical axis and boil time on the horizontal axis. Boiled at 100 ° C (red) is faster and shorter than 80 ° C (black). It is shown to be. The star mark is the point where spaghetti becomes
In addition, Tawfick calculates an equation to calculate l s as an index from the distance between two spaghettis, the radius of spaghetti, the elastic modulus of spaghetti, the surface tension of hot water, and the boiling time.
'Our experiments make it possible to measure boiledness by simply measuring the length of two spaghettis. If this experiment is further verified by a professional chef, it will be at home. But it has the potential to be applied, and we believe that this study can provide spaghetti makers with insights to find the optimal cooking time to reproduce the texture of delicious spaghetti. ' Said.
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