Pancake Physics to Cut Batter Splatter

Anonymous Coward writes "The headline just about says it all on this one. A physics grad student in the UK has come up with the mathematical formula for how to flip a pancake and have it land correctly back in the pan. The BBC has the details."

Pancakes, crepes, flapjack...

[marnanel]

Americans should bear in mind that what are called "pancakes" in England are called "crepes" in America. What are called "pancakes" in America are called "Scotch pancakes" in the south of England, and "drop scones" in Scotland and the north of England. Meanwhile, "flapjacks" are a kind of oaty biscuit. Confused yet?

Shrove Tuesday (why the BBC ran the story then)

[WebfishUK]

Not sure about other countries but last Tuesday (4th) was Shrove Tuesday in the UK when we all make pancakes. For the religious amongst you the word 'Shrove' refers to the practice of confessing of sins, then afterwards the fast of Lent could be considered a penance of faults committed. Thats why the BBC ran the story on Tuesday. However, most of us just love eating the pancakes!

BBC doesn't understand it

[panurge]

The BBC quotes a garbled version of the equation (haven't they got an equation setter? cheapskates) but clearly don't understand what it means.

AFAIUI it simply means that the pancake needs to spin at such a rate that it will flip 180 degrees between leaving the pan and returning. Given that it will not fall back flat unless the flip is 180n degrees, n integral, this is pretty blindingly obvious.

Unfortunately, the equation is just that and doesn't tell you how to achieve flip rate nirvana. So here is my guide:

• First, use a nonstick pan with a gently sloping edge.
• Second, use just enough oil to ensure the crepe can slide around smoothly.
• Third, in order to flip, start by lowering the far edge of the pan so the crepe starts to slide towards the edge.
• Then, as the crepe reaches the edge, rotate the elbow upwards so that the crepe slides off the edge in an upward direction. This provides the spin. The speed doesn't need to be too high. As the crepe flips over, catch it with the pan horizontal.
• Start with small crepes and build up.
• When I was first shown this technique in a creperie in Normandy, by the end of the evening I could flip them up to ceiling height and still recover them.

Creperies that use precooked crepes made on industrial conveyor belts are of course beyond the pale.

MIT did it first ...

[droopycom]

...although less spectacular

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/1995/40409.html

Re:Amazing Brits...

[Goth Biker Babe]

Ever heard of RISC OS [riscos.com] It's been around for about ten years now. It was used widely in schools (until Blair started getting chummy with a certain Mr Gates) on British designed hardware by Acorn. Now-a-days the Brits contribute a lot to the open source community. Alan Cox and Russell King are two notable personalities.

I for one definitely don't say give me microsoft and probably use more european software than american software. My hardware is mainly Taiwanese, Korean or Japanese except for the SGIs. The US is definitely not the fount of all knowledge and technology.

Re:Amazing Brits...

[JimPooley]

But when it comes to making an Operating System or even choosing one for their schools, they simply turn to America and say, "Give us Microsoft". Amazing.

It was not always the way. After all, business computing began here with the Lyons Electronic Office [btinternet.co.uk], and in the 80's schools used the BBC Micro [mcmordie.co.uk], developed by Acorn in Cambridge.

The rot didn't set in until the 90s, and a once thriving British computer industry went down the pan. For shame.

I blame the government. It doesn't help when we have a PM keen to lick arse, whether that arse be Bill Gates' or Dubya Bush's.

Re:Amazing Brits... BCPL

[Burb]

Oh yes, and if you look in your history books you'll find that C owes a lot to a certain language called BCPL developed by Martin Richards at Cambridge University in the 60's ...

Re:Shrove Tuesday (why the BBC ran the story then)

[HumanXX]

Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, the period of 40 days leading upto Easter where people would originally go without eating various dairy products for that period. History was that people would use up all the eggs, and milk in the house, so someone came upon the idea of making pancakes.

I made some cracking pancakes on Tuesday, my special recipe involves grating bits of lemon and lime rind into the batter, mmmmm, that citrus flavour flows all through the pancakes, nice.

I am not religious but it is always useful to know about as many different religions as possible as this gives you many excuses to feast, well that and setting off lots of fireworks.

Re: In England we're real tossers

[Amroarer]

Well, where I come from, we don't use no spatulas to toss pancakes... (Although some more cautious people do slip them out of the pan onto a plate, then drop them back in upside down.) English pancakes are so wide and thin that a spatula's likely to just tear them. Instead you have to use the showing-off-method.

First you make a circular movement with the pan to ensure that the pancake hasn't stuck and overcome static friction.

Then you tilt the end of the pan down slightly and make a short, sharp inward movement, to get the pancake sliding outwards.

Then you sharply flick the pan up, so that the pancake goes between one and two feet in the air (more if you're feeling cocky) and also spins enough that it lands in the pan the other way up.

I'll be very impressed if they invent a machine which can repeatably toss pancakes. There are an awful lot of variables, which he seems to ignore. But then he is a physicist, not an engineer. ;-)

Re:Sounds good

[the_pooh_experience]

block quote of the article:

His theoretical work laid the groundwork for students designing a pancake-tossing machine, which could one day become a feature in every home.

Someone's already in the process of beating you to the punch.

Off topic but...

[the_pooh_experience]

I know this is really off topic, but it is on, if the topic is "reasonibly absurd science". In Nature [nature.com] last December, they decided to publish a short note about an Austrailian matehmatician's work on The Best Way To Lace Your Shoelaces [nature.com]

No joke.

Re:err

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

hmm . . . I notice that this formula does not factor in mass of the pancake. this makes me wonder, being not-so-smart in physics, would this formula apply for any size pancake??

In problems driven solely by gravity, the mass typically drops out. Thank you, Equivalence Principle.

and how about objects other than pancakes? could I flip say, a thanksgiving turkey and still have it land perfectly in the pan, using this formula?

A pancake is a nicely simple and symmetric object. Indeed, the symmetry means that whenever you flip it, you're doing so about a stable axis. Other shapes, not so nice... your turkey might tumble wildly. Also, while the mass drops out of the angular velocity, it does not drop out of the formula for the needed force -- and a turkey tends to be quite a bit more massive than a crepe.

You're wasting eggs

[Anonymous Coward]

100-200 wasted eggs

You shouldn't use eggs for 95% of the training. Put a piece of toast in the pan and flip it until it lands gently. Also with good technique for eggs (over and omlettes), the first part out of the pan is coming back into about the middle of the pan before last part has left the pan. This avoids the impact onto the pan that can cause yolks to break and splatter of butter/margarine/etc.

A former line cook and now a software engineer.

Re:Amazing Brits...

[Mr_Dyqik]

And parlimentary democracy was instituted in the 13th Century with the signing of the Magna Carta. By the 17th Century we'd had a civil war during which the King was removed from power and only parliment ruled the country. So Britain was a democracy at least a century before the American Revolution

Lard! Eat this Shit and DIE!

[WIAKywbfatw]

...but the english tend to use gallons of lard when cooking at home...

I'm English and (unsurprisingly, as I live in England) so are most of the people that I know. There isn't any lard in my house. Or, from what I've seen when eating at friends' houses, anywhere else.

The supermarket aisles devote about 50 times more space to butters and margarines than they do to lard, so that suggests that demand for lard isn't exactly huge.

Perhaps, like all Frenchmen having smelly breath or all Australians being called Bruce, this is one of another one of those urban myths that you Americans have bought into?

(BTW, "Lard! Eat this Shit and DIE!" is a reference to the late, great, Bill Hicks. Great comedian. Great loss.)

Re:Amazing Brits...

[Galvatron]

inventing democracy

I think the Athenians have prior art. You can have credit for the court system, with seperate judge, jury, and executioner, though. That, in my opinion, is as or more important.

Pancake Algebra, it actually exists...

[lonedfx]

Pancake Algebra [pancakemath.org]

not quite the same, but thoroughly enjoyable !

Francis.

Re:Problem already solved

[Atrahasis]

Presumably both "pans" would be heated before putting any batter into the thing, so the residual heat should cook both sides at once, otherwise you'd get one fried side and one nasty tough braised side.