The next time you grab a handful of buttery popcorn from the bucket resting on your lap at the movies consider this: the transformation from golden kernels to tasty cloud-like puffs can be scientifically explained through the kinetic molecular theory of gases. But, as The New York Times recently reported, the actual ‘pop’ has remained mysterious phenomenon — until now.
“The basic science of popcorn is pretty familiar: Heat up a kernel until the pressure from water vapor makes it pop.
But two French scientists have gone deeper into the mysteries of one of the most popular butter and salt substrates, and they report new insights into not only the pop, but the jump.
Popcorn kernels do not only burst from a hard hull. They also vault into the air and somersault like an oddly shaped gymnast, with one puffy white leg.
Emmanuel Virot of the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaisaeu, France, and Alexandre Ponomarenko, now at Grenoble University, used high-speed video cameras and a hot plate to illuminate the physics of the kernel’s leap. In their report last week in the journal Interface, they described that puffy leglike bit of the kernel as acting like a muscle.”
