Pasta Science Trivia Quiz

Answer: Explosion

A hazard common to dust-generating organic materials is that a high-enough concentrations of dust in an enclosed space is highly combustible and may only require a spark to ignite. Examples of where it has gone wrong include the 1872 explosion at the Tradeston Flour Mills in Glasgow, Scotland with 18 fatalities and the one at Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis, USA in 1878 which also resulted in 18 deaths.

In fact, over 2,000 deaths have been attributed to dust explosions, the worst being a coal mine in China in 1942 when over 1,500 died. Dust from sources such as flour, grain, flax, polyethylene, corn starch, barley, sugar, wood, metal polishings and coal have been blamed for explosions causing death.

Answer: Temperature

The water and flour ratio is critical to forming a dough of the correct stiffness for a given temperature. Friction from the extrusion process will heat up the machinery and hence the dough and as a result change the properties of the dough as it is being extruded. To avoid this, the extruder can have a water jacket fitted to maintain the temperature of the dough within limits (such as 40 to 45 deg C (104 to 113 deg F)).

Whilst lubrication helps with reducing friction, it tends to be Teflon-coated surfaces rather than a liquid as the liquid would contaminate the pasta. Tungsten is a hard and brittle metal which does not lend itself to easy machining. Machinery for food processing is usually made of stainless steel although the moulds may be made of Teflon-coated bronze. Cleanroom conditions are not required for food preservation purposes as the temperature reached during post-extrusion drying can be set to kill most bacteria.

Answer: Extruding under vacuum

Extruding the pasta under vacuum improves the consistency of the pasta by removing air bubbles in the dough, which would otherwise result in decreased mechanical strength in the dried pasta, less consistent shape and texture, and generally a poorer quality product. Trapped bubbles would also allow some undesirable oxidation.

The change in pressure caused by the vacuum encourages any dissolved air to come out of solution and to migrate to the lower pressure area, namely the vacuum.

Answer: Cooling effect of the vacuum

Any cooling effect is likely to slow down water absorption rather than increase it. Vacuum-induced cooling should not be an issue as the mixer would ideally have a water jacket to maintain the temperature at the desired mixing temperature, between 30 - 40 deg C (86 - 104 deg F) typically.

Answer: True

One of the problems with some shaped forms of pasta is that air takes up a lot of the space in the package. From a manufacturing point of view, this is not cost effective as larger and hence more costly packaging is required for a given weight of pasta, taking up more space and resulting in greater transportation costs. Shapes such as lasagna and spaghetti which can be flat-packed, are thus more cost efficient to move around.

Research has been carried out into making morphing pasta, where surface grooves are pressed into flat pasta during the manufacturing process. When cooked the pasta 'morphs' into a specific shape, depending on the design of the surface grooves. As dried pasta, it can be stored flat for efficient packing with resultant cost savings.

Answer: Richard Feynman

An evening covering the kitchen floor in broken spaghetti did not solve the problem for Feynman. Two decades later, it was high-speed photography that helped work out what was happening. It has since been found that gently twisting the spaghetti before bending can make all the difference.

When a stick of spaghetti initially breaks, it is usually where the bend is greatest and the stress highest. On breaking the stick, a snap-back effect is created when the broken ends straighten, resulting in a wave of energy passing down the broken halves. If there are other stressed sections, this energy is often sufficient to break them as well. The correct amount of twisting before bending changes the snap-back energy distribution and can result in just the one break.

Answer: Starch

Pasta cacio e pepe is a traditional Italian dish made with relatively simple ingredients. Getting a creamy smooth cheese sauce instead a lumpy one however can be tricky and involves phase separation physics.

The key elements in this sauce are the cheese, pasta-infused water and temperature. The pasta-infused water contains starch which acts as a stabiliser. To achieve a smooth sauce, there needs to be sufficient starch in the water for the amount of cheese. Too much starch and the sauce will be too thick. On the other hand, not enough starch and the result will be clumps of cheese proteins suspended in water, the so-called mozzarella phase. It will also go wrong if the cooking temperature is too high.

For a rich cheese sauce, generally, there will not be sufficient starch from the pasta water alone. Boiling off some of the pasta water first is one way to increase the starch concentration, however it is easier to add a measured quantity of starch, such as corn flour, to get the correct amount.

Answer: Iodine

Pasta is traditionally made from durum wheat which, when ground, produces semolina flour. The flour contains carbohydrates in the form of starch. This includes amylose, a long-chain polysaccharide with a tight helical structure. Iodides in aqueous solution are able to slip inside the amylose structure and become trapped. Aqueous iodides have a different charge transfer complex compared to iodides trapped in the amylose structure which results in different frequencies of light being absorbed. This is seen as a colour change with the brownish aqueous iodides becomes blue-black in the presence of starch.

Answer: Viscoelasticity

Viscoelasticity is an example of non-Newtonian behaviour. Newtonian behaviour describes fluids that follow Newton's Law of Viscosity. Such fluids (such as air or water) show constant viscosity regardless of how hard they are stirred. Oobleck and pasta both show non-Newtonian behaviour but in different ways. With cooked pasta, it will flex elastically when a force is applied, returning to its original shape after the force is removed.

The viscosity is shown as a resistance to a force. In the case of cooked pasta, it exhibits shear thinning - it gets easier to twist a fork of spaghetti the more that force is applied. With oobleck it is shear thickening - easy to stir when force is applied slowly, it becomes an elastic solid when a quick, strong force is used.

The name 'oobleck' comes from the 1949 children's book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" by Dr Seuss.

Answer: Sardinia

taly is the home of pasta. For the last three centuries this pasta has only been made by the women of one family in the town of Nuoro in Sardinia. Now however the skill is in danger of being lost. Attempts to make this pasta commercially have come to nothing so far. It is made by drawing out thin strands by hand from a suitable dough. It is then laid out to dry in a three-layer web. The pasta forms part of a sacred dish served to pilgrims who have journeyed to the Sardinian village of Lula for the biannual Feast of San Francesco.

Nanopasta is the thinnest pasta made so far. It consists of strands about 200 times thinner than a human hair and involves dissolving semolina flour in formic acid and drawing it through a needle with an electric charge in a technique called electrospinning. Nanopasta is not for eating. It is used to make a mat of nanofibres with potential uses such as wound dressings, tissue scaffolds and as a drug delivery medium.