We use a lot of energy moving stuff around, and we don’t always do it efficiently.
With pasta, for example, most of what we’re actually shipping is the air in the box.
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have an idea to change that: a flat-packed pasta that changes shape when you cook it.
We could conserve a lot of energy by making and shipping pasta that’s completely flat.
But how do we turn those flat pieces back into the noodles that end up in so many delicious dishes?
The researchers used “groove-based transient morphing.”
No, they don’t play funk music to the noodles, they stamp each piece with a series of grooves that will affect how it folds and bends as it cooks.
And the shapes they were able to make out of the shape-shifting pasta are, well, pretty groovy.
Also, if there are shape-shifting noodles, would there leader have to be called Pastimus Prime?
The New York Times published a wild food story this week.
The headline was “Fields of Watermelons Found On Mars, Police Say.”
This was probably a test page, because their tale of fruit aliens, supposedly written by “Joe Schmoe” and with a last line of “This story is terribly boring,” was quickly yanked from the website.
Still, I’d have the Mars rover do a quick check.
Mighty morphin’ flat-packed pasta takes on 3D shapes as it cooks (Ars Technica)
New York Times Publishes Then Deletes Article Claiming Watermelons Were Found on Mars (Futurism)
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