Podcast Episode #209: “Words for Food in Your Mouth”

Words for Food in Your Mouth, an Apple a Day, Eating the Shrew, an Epidemic of Penile Amputations, Reactions to Chicken Nuggets, Ig and Beyond, What Matters in NBA Games, Why Spaghetti, and What Your Gut Says Psychoanalytically. In episode #209, Marc Abrahams shows some unfamiliar research studies to Jean Berko Gleason, Chris Cotsapas, Kishore […]

Physics Breakthough: Snapping a Spaghetti Strand Into 2 (Not 3!) Pieces

BREAKING NEWS! WITH A SURPRISING TWIST! Spaghetti—dry spaghetti—again feeds the intellectual fervor of physicists. Five physicists serve up a surprising new study about an old question about bending a strand past its breaking point: “Controlling Fracture Cascades Through Twisting and Quenching,” Ronald H. Heisser, Vishal P. Patil, Norbert Stoop, Emmanuel Villermaux, and Jörn Dunkel, Proceedings […]

Statistical Methods Using the Stick-on-the-Wall Spaghetti Rule

The belief that “statistics is like spaghetti” is a good starting point from which to savor this new study about statistics and spaghetti: “Exploration of Experimental Design and Statistical Methods Using the Stick-on-the-Wall Spaghetti Rule,” Simone Montangero, Francesca Vittone, Sally Olderbak, and Oliver Wilhelm, Teaching Statistics, epub 2018. The authors, at Universität Ulm, Germany, explain: […]

Testing the “Stick-on-the-wall Spaghetti rule”

Testing the “Stick-on-the-wall Spaghetti rule” by Simone Montangero and Francesca Vittone Institute for Complex Quantum Systems, Ulm University Ulm, Germany There is always a moment when Italians abroad come across a local who explains to them a simple way of knowing how to cook Spaghetti “al dente”: throw them to the wall, if they stick they are […]

A super, super slo-mo video look at the snapping of a spaghetti strand

Destin, the star of the SmarterEveryDay video series, takes a very, very slow motion look at the spaghetti-breaking oddity that led to an Ig Nobel Prize in physics: The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when you bend […]

Spaghetti Plot Alternatives

When differing longitudinal graphs are overlayed – in order to visualise data from a large number of  sauces  sources – the results can become confusing – possibly even meaningless. The outcome, in the parlance of data analysts, has turned into a so-called ‘Spaghetti Plot’. (see pic below) But Bruce J. Swihart and his colleagues Brian […]

The broken-spaghetti physics behind Illustrator

Research on how spaghetti breaks (research that was honored with the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in physics) had an influence on modern computer-aided drawing tools. Melanie Kaplan in SmartPlanet reports: During a recent conversation with Eitan Grinspun [pictured, spaghetti-less, here], I found myself wondering whether he is more obsessed with food or with movement. But then […]