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When you walk down the pasta aisle at the supermarket, there are so many tasty choices: There’s the humble spaghetti, the tubes of ziti, the tiny shells, and the butterfly-like farfalle. But every pound of pasta is not created equal some of the boxes pack mostly air.
In recent work published in the journal Science Advances, Dr. Lining Yao of Carnegie Mellon’s Morphing Matter Lab and her colleagues discuss an innovative way to solve the problem of puffed-up pasta boxes: What if different pasta shapes could be flat-packed into containers like DIY IKEA furniture?
The researchers developed a way to map out tiny grooves and ridges on the surface of a flat noodle sheet. When the pasta is cooked in hot water, it swells at different rates around the ridges and grooves, causing it to fold on its own into shapes such as boxes, rose-like flowers, and helix curls.
A research team led by the Morphing Matter Lab at Carnegie Mellon University is developing flat pasta that forms into familiar shapes when cooked. The team impresses tiny grooves into flat pasta dough made of only semolina flour and water in patt
Eco-friendly geometry: smart pasta can halve packaging waste at no extra cost
Mathematics to the rescue! A A
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Pasta comes in a variety of shapes and sizes from the plain and simple to all sorts of quirky spirals. But for the most part, they have one thing in common: they’re not using space very effectively. But a new study may change that.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have found a way to change that, designing new types of pasta that use less packaging and are easier to transport, reducing both transportation emissions and packaging plastic.
Unconventional pasta shapes use up less space but spring to life in water. Image credits: Morphing Matter Lab. Carnegie Mellon University.