Cooks throughout Asia put moist bamboo chopsticks into hot oil in a frying pan, watching the bubbles that form and listening to the sizzling sound they make as they burst to gauge the perfect cooking temperature.
Now, an international team of researchers, including a professor from Waterloo Engineering, has used the technique as inspiration to learn about the complex physics behind the seemingly simple trick.
Zhao Pan is a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering.
“Many cookbooks teach this technique and it is widely used, but when we searched the academic literature, we couldn’t find any detailed scientific explanations,” said Zhao Pan, a mechanical and mechatronics engineering professor at the University of Waterloo. “We set out to provide one.”
The project involved experiments placing wet paper, moistened chopsticks and water droplets in hot oil, with the results recorded using sensitive microphones and high-speed cameras.
Go to How wet chopsticks hitting hot oil advance our understanding of physics for the full story.