Physicists solve old spaghetti mystery
Can you break a strand of uncooked spaghetti in two? Not just break, we mean in exactly two pieces, no more. The question has fascinated scientists and materials researchers for decades, such as US Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman, who never found the answer. In 2005, French physicists were awarded the lg Nobel Prize for proving why spaghetti always breaks into three or four pieces. The lg Nobel Prize is the alternative Nobel Prize awarded to seemingly foolish or 'imaginative' research projects. The French scientists found a type of "recoil" effect after the first rupture.
As the rupture occurs, the two spaghetti ends flick so quickly back to their original conditions that the external ends cannot follow suit, breaking off. The effect is there after just 0.0001 second. International scientists have found out how to avoid the recoil. The trick consists in wringing the spaghetti before breaking it. The scientists designed a special device that can wring spaghetti around its own axis, rupturing hundreds of spaghetti strands and mapping out the relationship between the spaghetti’s length and the degree of wring required to avoid other ruptures.
The results can contribute to the deeper understanding of how materials weaken when subjected to wringing. This could be important in connection with materials testing, when engineers construct buildings and bridges.