It’s sad that no Indian scientist has figured out the physics of tossing `parotta’ into the air. The secret of such a fascinating vertical flying saucer effect should not remain unidentified. For, what would happen if we try the feat? In all probability, if not stuck to the source and won’t go up at all, the stuff would cling to the ceiling or end up on the floor. How to stop this culinary catastrophe?

Consider a parallel from elsewhere — the pancake, for instance. It has a got a day dedicated to it. Shrove Tuesday, celebrated on the eve of Ash Wednesday, is openly dedicated to gluttony, but it is a pancake carnival in particular. No wonder a question of enormous monetary significance occurred to supermarket giant Safeway: how to flip the pancake best. They knew they needed a string of intricate equations and theories to tweak the art to perfection.

Safeway kept Dr Garry Tungate (Birmingham University) busy and, after hours of meticulous research, he came up with a recipe for success. The angular velocity of the object equals the square root of Pi times the gravity divided by the distance the pancake is from the elbow times four – that is how to get the pancake back in the pan. Since this is too difficult to understand, we need another way to put it.

Aim to flip the pancake into the air at a speed of 10 miles an hour. This means it will take less than half a second to reach the top of its trajectory. By then the pancake should have rotated 90 degrees at a rate of 0.55 revolutions per second. If we fail, a sticky mass of flying batter will spin through the air. If not, it should take 0.45 seconds on the downward journey (total airtime just 9/10ths of a second), entailing the perfect toss with a 90 degree flip on the way down.

If this sounds too complicated, just keep to the basics: flip the wrist in such a way that the pan moves in an upward arc which causes the pancake to slide up and out of the pan. A direct lift leaves a partial vacuum under the pancake which tends to keep it in the pan. The power to flip the pancake comes from the movement in the arc. In short, you need a non-stick pan, a nifty wrist action, plus a handful of torque and velocity.

SNEAK PREVIEW

PEAK HOURS: Some say male scientists and criminals share a trait. Apparently both hit the peak early in their careers. A new look at 280 eminent scientists, from Curie to Einstein, shows that two-thirds of them made their cutting edge contributions to science before their mid-30s. There was a rapid decline in productivity after they got married. And previous research shows that male delinquents tend to start committing crimes early in life but stop when they get domestic. The theory is that as men find partners, get hitched and have kids, their testosterone levels fall and they no longer feel the need to compete with one another.

“BUCKY” COUSINS: Buckyballs are pure carbon molecules structurally similar to diamonds and graphite. They’re named after Buckminster Fuller who envisioned their soccer ball-like shapes. Scientists have created tiny transistors made of a single buckyball bouncing between two electrodes. The buckyball and its cylindrical cousin the buckytube are more than just excellent conductors of electricity. They are also 100 times stronger than steel, and can survive temperatures of almost 1800 degrees C. Possibly the “bucky” cousins may form the building blocks for paperback-sized supercomputers and nanorobots that are only a few billionths of a meter across.

QUIZ NO.181

1. Elo is a rating system used in …

– Russian ballet
– English learning
– International chess
– Musical charts

1. International chess.

2. Who do you expect to see as Marco Polo in a new movie?

– Matt Demon
– Orlando Bloom
– Michael Douglas
– Russel Crowe

2. Matt Damon.

3. First impression may be the best impression, but not the best title for a novel. Who felt so?

– Jane Austen
– Jonathan Swift
– John Galsworthy
– James Joyce

3. Jane Austen (her ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was originally named ‘First Impressions’).

4. Which soccer champ faced charges of shoplifting on a World Cup finals eve?

– Bobby Moore
– Michael Platini
– Franz Beckenbaur
– Roberto Baggio

4. Bobby Moore (along with Bobby Charlton).

5. Who in the list hasn’t got a new species of beetle named after him?

– Tony Blair
– George Bush
– Dick Cheney
– Donald Rumsfeld

5. Tony Blair