When bent, why does dry spaghetti break into three or more pieces instead of two? This was one of the simple problems Richard Feynman amused himself with but never solved. Someone's come up with the answer: when the first breakage occurs, it causes a local increase in the curvature of the two pieces, resulting in more breakage. (thx dj)
This entry was published on August 15, 2005 at 04:40 pm.
Tags for this entry: science food physics richardfeynman spaghetti
kottke.org is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998. You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or an interesting link for me, send them along. Here's the kottke.org RSS feed 
.
Advertise on kottke.org via The Deck.
You're visiting kottke.org. All content by Jason Kottke (contact me) unless otherwise noted, with some restrictions on its use. Good luck will come to those who dig around in the archives. If you've reached this point by accident, I suggest panic. In memory of DFW, rest in peace. Thanks for everything.