Science can be fun, but it can also be a bit of a buzzkill. After all, do we really need to know why popcorn pops? Do we really need to know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Sure there are more important things to research, but these two questions got attention this week and have been answered.
Up first is popcorn. On Wednesday, the Journal of the Royal Society Interface published research by a French team, led by Emmanuel Virot, a PhD student at the CNRS in Paris. According to the Guardian, they found that the exact temperature that popcorn kernels will split is at 180 degrees Celsius.
They discovered that the “pop” noise is created by water vapor quickly escaping from the kernel. When that happens, the kernel becomes an “acoustic resonator,” which creates the familiar “pop.” The authors wrote that it was similar to the “pop” heard when a champagne bottle is opened.
The team used high-speed imaging techniques to study popcorn and other plant dynamics.
Another beloved snack, the Tootsie Pop, had scientists busy this week. The New York Post reports that NYU researchers published a paper in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics that determined how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.
They determined that you would have to lick the candy around 2,500 times to get to the center. In other words, if you are impatient, you should just get Tootsie Rolls instead.