Easy to store, fun to eat: a new technology turns pasta sheets into creative shapes upon boiling
Israeli researchers have developed a technique for manufacturing pasta that can be ‘preprogrammed’ for specific shape shifting upon boiling. This “shape-shifting” pasta is manufactured flat and straight and flat-packed into low volume straight boxes – upon boiling in water the pasta takes on twisty, twirly shapes.
This new invention aims to reduce bulky, space consuming pasta packaging. The pasta is manufactured straight and flat-packed into low volume straight boxes. When boiled, the pasta takes on different shapes. Researchers hope that their invention will saves space for transport and storage and maybe even resulted in savings in shipping and storage costs.
“I think bringing dynamics and events of morphing and easily-implemented shape changes into the kitchen could change the entire environment of cooking and eating,” lead researcher Professor Eran Sharon told Israeli website NoCamels.
Sharon, self-described as ‘experimentalist,’ says that the innovation behind this approach to pasta did not come from Sharon’s kitchen, but rather, from his physics lab. With an extensive background in physics and a 19-year tenure at Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a professor, Sharon has long been interested in the field of shape-shifting – or self-morphing.
The shape-shifting pasta idea followed previous pioneering work of Sharon and his team of shape-shifting solids – a phenomenon that has since taken the interest of scientists around the globe, Sharon explained. Self-morphing is a field of physics that looks at the properties of materials and the potential to encode different shape patterns.
“This was not known as a manufacturing approach, even 15 years ago, and this is what we developed,” he said.