It's Impossible to Fry Food in Zero G
Dec 30, 2013 02:58
Fancy fried chicken? How about adding that into the space menu? Sounds great, but unfortunately for astronauts, zero G will make it impossible to fry food.
Of course, it's not even practical to fry food in microgravity. Remember how water doesn't like to stay where it should be? Researchers John S. Liombas and Thodoris D. Karapantsios went deeper into that study and published it in Food Research International featuring some wild experiments that have floating oil globs.
Frying food relies on convection, which is a process where hot oil in a pot rises to the top, cools down, sinks, warms up and rises again.
That process, in forces of around 3 g - get stronger, and oil bubbles get smaller. At 9 g, forces get problematically strong. As for the inverse, it is true too, which means in zero g there is no convective force, meaning there's no way fried food can crisp up.
[BBC Future via Smithsonian Mag]
Of course, it's not even practical to fry food in microgravity. Remember how water doesn't like to stay where it should be? Researchers John S. Liombas and Thodoris D. Karapantsios went deeper into that study and published it in Food Research International featuring some wild experiments that have floating oil globs.
Frying food relies on convection, which is a process where hot oil in a pot rises to the top, cools down, sinks, warms up and rises again.
That process, in forces of around 3 g - get stronger, and oil bubbles get smaller. At 9 g, forces get problematically strong. As for the inverse, it is true too, which means in zero g there is no convective force, meaning there's no way fried food can crisp up.
[BBC Future via Smithsonian Mag]
