When it comes to the great questions posed by human thinking, physicists have a natural propensity to bring everything down to physics. What brings us here? Is there life in the universe that we don’t know about? Is a hot dog, after all, a sandwich? According to a new study, the answer is yes. Based on the power of statistical mechanics, the work has produced a novel method to culinary taxonomy.
All food exists in this three-dimensional phase space, according to the researchers Madelyn Leembruggen and Caroline Martin, where it can be classed as soup, salad, or sandwich. In physics, phase diagrams are frequently used to explain the multiple phases of water as a function of pressure, temperature, and volume. A soup is a blend of components in a largely water-based liquid. A salad is a blend of foods with very little water. In terms of temperature and pressure, this can be plotted on a graph. Given how loosely the salad is held together, higher pressure leads to soup and lower pressure leads to salad. Low temperature and high pressure, on the other hand, produce glassy soup, or ice cream, as defined by physicists.
A salad is a dish of chicken wings or just shredded cheese (I’m going to utilize that assertion). The carbohydrate content is zero in this single slice of the Triple-S phase diagram. After you’ve taken everything into account, you’ll need to investigate the sandwich volume of this phase space. What’s great (or frustrating) is that carbs alone aren’t enough to make a sandwich; pressure and temperature, as well as several ingredients, are required. Outside of this diagram, there is a single raspberry or a steak.
So there’s no salad when you’re under duress, and you’re stuck with chicken noodle soup on the soup side and soup dumplings on the sandwich side. However, as the temperature drops, you’ll see things like mochi on the sandwich side and ice cream sandwiches on the soup (glassy)-sandwich border. Pasta is found at moderate pressure and is used in soups, salads, and sandwiches. So, if you think a hot dog being a sandwich is an affront to God, remember that most pasta dishes, unless loaded, are salads. We also come across a triple point there. Water, for example, occurs as a vapor, a liquid, and a solid in typical phase diagrams.
The ice cream sundae, which includes a soup, salad, and sandwich, is the triple threat here. You are not alone if you believe this is all wrong. Before producing a paper, the researchers conducted a Twitter poll, which revealed that 78.6 percent of users disagreed with the categorisation. They published a paper on the ArXiv on April Fools’ Day. If this isn’t your cup of tea – sorry – perhaps a paper on the impact of exomoons on werewolves or a machine learning method that can predict the winners of the reality TV dating show The Bachelor would be more to your liking.
