Physics in the Kitchen

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 Contents

1 Introduction 1
A Physicist Cook’s Welcome 2
But Wait—Is It Physics or Chemistry in the Kitchen? 5
A Few Words on the Structure of the Book 7
2 Building an Appetite—Energy: The Currency of Life,
Food, and … Everything Else 11
Hot, Dancing Atoms 14
Immutable Laws 17
The Sun’s Gifts 20
Chameleon Energy 25
Atoms Never Die 30
The Dance and Flow of Heat 33
Shifty Atoms 36
Quantum Weirdness 38
3 A Physics Cornucopia 41
Water, the Beginning of All Things 42
Edible … Plastics—The Building Blocks of Life and Food 46
Physics in a Cup of Tea 48
Fruit and Vegetables—Catalysts of Life 50
Irradiation for Long Life 52
Sugar, aka Brain Food 53
Cutting Molecules 55

v
vi Contents

I Am Toast, You Are Toast 58

Can You Walk on Water? 60
Dripping Honey and Stubborn Ketchup 63
Edible Fibres—Widespread and Tasty 65
A Burning Hot Pleasure 66
Chameleon Food 67
Eggshells—Nature’s Engineering Marvel 70
Collagen and Gluten—Super-Elasticity in Nature 72
Bones and Tendons—Nature’s Super-Materials 74
Sea Magic 75
4 Gourmet Physics 77
The Physics of Dissolving 78
Boiling Magic 79
High Cooking 82
The Shuffle of Atoms and Molecules in a Pot 84
Up Close and Personal 86
More Edible Plastics—Jellies, Sauces, Syrups, and Creams 88
Creamy Emulsion or Curdled Mess? 89
Pressure or No Pressure? 91
Cooking by … Radar 93
Wine, Vinegar, and Lemon—A Dashing Trio 95
Salt and Sugar—A Love–Hate Relationship 97
Looking Through the … Syrup 99
Denatured Scum Always Rises to the Top 101
Dragged Over the Coals or Trial by Fire? 103
Fat on Fire 106
Batter Matters 109
Drink and be Bubbly and Merry 110
Swelling Pressure and Architectural Perfection 111
Fine Delicacies—Mouldy Yeast and Tasty Microbes 115
Slow Food Versus Fast Food 117
On Thin Ice—Chocolate Baked Alaska 120
Stretchy Dough 121
Wholesome Food 122
Explosive Food 123
Overcooking Trouble 126
Shaken, Stirred, Beaten, Kneaded, or Whisked? 127
Making Food Last 129
Fermented Shark, Anyone? Heat-Free Cooking 134
Left-Overs Taste Better 135
 Contents vii

Always Store in a Cool Dry Place? 136

When Freezing Goes Wrong 140
Tastebuds Never Lie—Or Do They? 142
Colourful Food and Colour Surprises 144
Toast Always Lands Butter-Side Down, but Gravity has Its
Good Side Too 145
What Every Coffee and Tea Lover Should Know 148
Storm in a Teacup 150
5 Tools of the Trade: Appliances, Materials, and Trusted
Kitchen Helpers 153
Gas or Electricity? 154
Induced Magic 158
The March of Electrons 159
Microwaves—The Quiet Revolution 161
Alarming Smoke 164
(Mal)odorous Extraction 165
Proving Its Mettle: The Metal Pot and Pan 168
The Beauty of Ceramics and Glass in the Kitchen 171
Plastic Fantastic … But Not All Plastics Are Born Equal 172
Cracking and Scratching 176
Cold Makes Things Snap 179
Kettles Like Spaceships Taking Off 180
An Igloo in Our Home 181
Shutting the Door 184
A Non-sticky Condition 186
When Hot Meets Cold—Shocking Heat 187
The Kitchen was Hi-Tech Before ‘Smart’ Tech Came Along 189
6 Physics is Everywhere You Look and … Hear 191
Kitchen Symphony 192
Dishwasher Power 194
Energy Waste—Tips and Tricks 195
Hammer and Spark 199
Weighing up 201
Tic–Toc 202
Kitchen on Fire 203
Indelible Stains and Miracle Workers 205
Sucking Things up, and Other Bits and Pieces 206
Post Script 207
 About the Author

George Vekinis is a research director and the former head of the Educa-
tion Office at the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos” in
Athens, Greece, and a university lecturer on advanced materials and tech-
nological entrepreneurship. He earned a Ph.D. in Physics at the University
of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and an M.B.A. (Core) at the Open
University, UK. In the past he worked at universities in South Africa and
the UK (University of Cambridge) and has served on numerous scientific
and technical committees. He has traveled extensively, supervised the research
work of over 120 students, and published and lectured extensively on physics,
space exploration, materials science and engineering as well as technology
transfer and entrepreneurship. His work has been funded by the European
Commission, the European Space Agency as well as various industrial enti-
ties, and he is the author of two books on entrepreneurship and technology
commercialization. He is happily married in Athens with two grown chil-
dren and two three-legged rescue cats. At weekends, he can reliably be found
cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

ix
 1
Introduction

"Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it

deeply enough."

Richard P. Feynman

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
G. Vekinis, Physics in the Kitchen, Copernicus Books,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34407-7_1
2 G. Vekinis

A Physicist Cook’s Welcome

The laws of physics are everywhere—from the way we think and breathe and
walk to the way our devices operate, and from the way our food is cooked
to the way we eat it and get sustenance from it. They are so ubiquitous and
all pervasive that they are invisible. We have grown up so immersed in them
that we don’t even consider them or think about them as we go about our
business under their total control. They are hidden in plain sight. Nearly
everything happens in nature—the kitchen included of course—according to
a plethora of unchanging rules (that’s why we call them “laws”), discovered
and clarified over many years by thousands of patient and persevering scien-
tists. They are the rules according to which the Earth moves, plants grow, and
we stay alive. Ok, we don’t yet completely understand everything, but give us
time… every day thousands of scientists are working towards a better and
better understanding of nature at all levels. From its workings at the atomic
and sub-atomic levels right up to the Universe as a whole and its origin. We
think up theories and hypotheses and then carry out systematic experiments
and careful observations to confirm them or discard them. And we are guided
by them in our everyday lives, mostly without realising it.
That’s what this book is all about. I’m a research physicist and at the same
time I love cooking and experimenting with new combinations of foods,
aiming to make interesting meals and cakes in the kitchen. But most of
all I love observing the physical phenomena that occur while I’m doing the
cooking and seeing how they affect the results. While I’m at it, I make mental
notes about how things proceed and may make adjustments or try new ideas
depending on what the physics—and the results of my experiments—tell me.
It’s the scientific method in the kitchen. I don’t always succeed in making a
gourmet supper, but the physics I see and the experiments I try are definitely
exciting! And sometimes it happens that the details of certain phenomena we
see in the kitchen are not what we expect or have come to believe.
I do the same in my scientific research. I observe what happens during
and after making specific adjustments in my experiments, and the feedback I
get guides my next steps. At the same time, I keep an open mind for correc-
tions or even additions to my knowledge. Whereas most of the basic laws of
physics are well understood and have been confirmed thousands of times,
some lesser phenomena are still under investigation and their meaning is
still being debated. And if we find that an existing theory is not completely
correct, we are the first to correct it or even discard it. That’s how scientific
study works. By checking again and again, by going to sleep with questions
and waking up with new ideas to test in order to answer them. I often do the
 1 Introduction 3

same with cooking. If something doesn’t work as I hope, I adjust it or change

it.
In fact, if I may digress a bit, that’s how the two greatest discoveries of
modern physics were made. Struggling to account for certain “annoying”
experimental and observational discrepancies that couldn’t be explained with
the knowledge of that time, the great scientists of the beginning of the twen-
tieth century discovered the two greatest fields of modern physics: quantum
mechanics1 and the modern theory of gravitation (the general theory of rela-
tivity).2 The first gave us a clearer picture of the atomic world, and it also gave
us electronics, computers, and a myriad other technological marvels that we
can now hardly imagine living without (including in the kitchen), while the
second gave us a much better understanding of the birth, development and
dynamics of the Universe and all the stars and other bodies within it.
But enough digression. Let’s go back to the kitchen and the physics that
abounds in it. All the phenomena that we observe while cooking obey the
laws of physics, as does everything that happens around the kitchen obey the
laws of physics. Actually, everything obeys the laws of physics, at least on this
Earth, and we believe everywhere else in the universe too. This little book
is an attempt to point out and clarify a few of these laws that govern our
everyday lives. And what better place to search for and observe them than
in our pots and pans and the various devices we keep in our own kitchen. I
wrote it because I love observing how ingredients (themselves made by and
governed by the laws of physics) heat and mix and combine to make a meal
that will in turn (hopefully) excite and please our brain via what else but our
physics-obeying taste buds, smell sensors, eyes, and even ears.
The modern kitchen is an exciting place. It’s full of devices, gadgets, and
machines created for our benefit. It’s the nexus of so many of our daily activ-
ities that the mind boggles when we start considering them all. It’s where
energy, water, and raw materials meet and are tamed by our own energy and
ingenuity to create food for our pleasure and sustenance. And it’s where we
exploit and use—usually unknowingly—a whole range of the laws of physics.
Consider something as simple as water coming out of a tap. How does
that happen? There is a fundamental law of physics that says that any system
if left alone will always try to reduce its internal energy.3 Because the water

1 Ludwig Boltzmann, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein to begin with, followed by Niels Bohr, Louis
de Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrödinger, and later,
Richard Feynman. And many others too.
2 Albert Einstein, single-handedly.
3 In thermodynamics, we’ll see later, there is an equivalent law for heat (the “second law”) which says
that heat can only flow from a place of high to a place of low temperature. If you want to reverse
the flow, you have to input energy.
4 G. Vekinis

in the pipe is under a high pressure (about 6 times atmospheric pressure and
the poor old pipes are straining to contain it, sometimes failing by rupture or
leakage), it contains a large amount of energy. As soon as the tap is opened,
water gushes out, because this way the energy of the system (the pipe and the
water in it) is reduced. The water we see gushing out is pushed out by the
water behind it, which is still under pressure in the pipe. Just like a mass of
people pushing to go through a narrow gate into a stadium. As soon as you
get through the gate, you feel the pressure behind you decreasing and you
are free. The same happens in the water pipe. As soon as the water emerges,
it is free and its pressure drops to that of the surroundings. Of course, it is
immediately acted upon by gravity, which forces it downwards. If there wasn’t
any gravity, it would just dance around aimlessly, splashing about, happy to
be free.
And, guess what. Exactly the same principle governs the movement of elec-
trons through a wire. There is a force pushing them forward (we call it the
“potential difference” or voltage) which forces a few electrons at a time4 out
of the end of the wire and into the electric circuit it is connected to, where
its charge (negative, by convention) is used as a unit of energy to carry out
some work.
Every time I cook, I enjoy seeing how many physical phenomena are
involved in preparing a simple meal or just a cup of tea. Even a simple
action in the kitchen such as boiling water in a kettle utilizes many phys-
ical phenomena and laws of physics. First, operating the switch forces two
pieces of metal (copper) to touch by exerting a force on them which closes an
electric circuit. This allows electrons to flow (again in order to minimize the
energy of the system) through the wires to the kettle, heating the element,
which is made of a material that resists electron flow. This resistance to elec-
trons (something like friction—rub your hands together vigorously and see
how they heat up) makes the element heat up. The element then passes (“con-
ducts”) the heat to the metallic base of the kettle and from there to the water
above it. The water molecules begin to vibrate more and more violently till
they can’t take it any longer and start escaping as steam!
Read the above paragraph again and count how many physics laws are
involved just to boil water! Our finger exerts a force on the switch which snaps
shut. Both these actions involve forces which distort the materials involved:
our finger (via our muscles) and the switch materials. Such mechanical distor-
tions obey, and are described by the physical laws of elasticity. Electrons
“jumping across” the touching metals obey the laws of quantum mechanics,

4 Well, hardly a few … maybe a few trillions per second, depending on the application. If it’s for
heating, it’s actually a heck of a lot—see later.
 1 Introduction 5

while electrons flowing around an electric circuit do so according to the

laws of electricity. When we heat the element and when we heat the water
which boils and evaporates, what happens obeys the laws of thermodynamics.
Physics is indeed everywhere.

But Wait—Is It Physics or Chemistry

in the Kitchen?
When I was writing this book, I (often) had to answer the question “but
isn’t cooking more to do with chemistry than with physics?” Well, I admit
it’s a good question and it’s a good idea to clarify it at the outset. Chemistry
deals with the properties of molecules, especially when they react together to
give something different, like a solution or another compound. But physics
explains how such reactions and interactions take place. In this respect all
chemical processes obey and are underpinned by physical laws, and specif-
ically the rules of quantum mechanics. In the case of chemical reactions,
chemistry tells us what is taking place, while physics explains why and how
it’s taking place. To a good approximation chemistry describes the results
of interactions between electron “orbitals” which are defined by quantum
mechanics. These “orbitals” have nothing to do with orbits, but are just
regions where electrons can be found around atoms. Depending on which
orbitals they belong to, the electrons have different, distinct energies. Actu-
ally, the word “quantum” (“packet” in Latin) was coined because the energy
of each orbital is always some multiple of a very small increment of energy.
Before we go on, I think we need a clarification about chemical bonds and
I’ll try to keep it simple. All organic molecules, including the proteins, sugars,
and everything else we use as food, are made up of atoms which are bonded
together in some way. There are many types of bonds in organic materials,
but the basic ones that concern us here are “covalent bonds” made by “sharing
electrons” (or, more correctly, “interactions between electron orbitals”), which
can be moderately to very strong, “ionic” bonds which rely on electrostatic
attraction between positive and negative ions (atoms) and “hydrogen bonds,”
which involve hydrogen atoms and are much weaker. Hydrogen bonds are
very widespread in organic materials like foods and a special type of them
is often found in small volatile aromatic molecules of herbs, coffee, tea, etc.
Moderate strength covalent bonds generally occur between smaller satellite
molecules and a main strong core molecule in proteins and other similar
structures, as well as between the amino acids that make up the long protein
molecules. However, amino acids and other basic molecules always have a
6 G. Vekinis

backbone made up of carbon atoms which are held together by strong cova-
lent bonds. During cooking, as we increase the total energy input (increasing
temperature and time), the hydrogen bonds break up (“dissociate”) first,
followed by the moderate covalent bonds, and only at high temperatures (that
we usually avoid in cooking) do the backbone carbon molecules break up.
Very often, as soon as some bonds break up, new ones form. When a
“solute” molecule dissolves in a “solvent” liquid, the solute molecule breaks
up and forms new bonds with the solvent molecule.
A lot of chemistry takes place during cooking, but cooking is much more
than reactions (or interactions) between molecules. While chemical reactions
do take place when we mix and heat ingredients, it is the laws of physics
(heat distribution, electrical interactions, orbital interactions, diffusion, etc.)
that hold sway over everything that happens in the pot, and in the kitchen
in general. From the moment you put a pot on the stove to the moment
you pour out a drink and swallow your food, you are, often without thinking
about it, exploiting or obeying physical laws.
In fact, when cooking, we often try to avoid chemical reactions. While we
exploit and use chemical solutions and try to “brown” certain foods, more
often than not we try to preserve many of the properties (the aroma, the
taste, the structure) of the raw materials we put in, and try to blend them
and find a balance between them which will provide culinary pleasure. In
some cases, we do encourage (and control) certain chemical reactions during
cooking, such as a slight “caramelisation” when stir frying of onions or leeks,
which slightly alters their taste, aroma, and structure. Or we use an acid or
the protein of an egg to encourage lipids (fats and oils) to stick to water.
Furthermore, one of the pillars of a sumptuous meal, a smooth sauce, does
involve chemistry which, in actual fact, is the same chemistry that we use to
make plastics: polymerisation reactions. We’ll discuss these aspects later and
delve more deeply into the corresponding mechanisms in order to understand
the physical processes that make them happen.
In a nutshell, this is the main objective of this book. To delve into, wonder
at, and elucidate many apparently simple phenomena that occur in the
kitchen, things that we usually take for granted. Through numerous exam-
ples, I’ll try to show you some of the physical phenomena and laws that hide
behind what happens in the kitchen, and show how they actually arise. Along
the way I hope to be able to give you a fresh perspective on one of the most
satisfying human inventions and pursuits, cooking. If you are, like me, an
eternally inquisitive type of person and an aspiring and curious cook (forever
experimenting, sometimes to the consternation of my family), I hope you’ll
 1 Introduction 7

enjoy the never-ending cascade of wonderful insights that we can get on the
way to making that lovely casserole.

A Few Words on the Structure of the Book

In an attempt to ensure some logical sequence and a good physics grounding
on the basic concepts (which I’ll refer to throughout the book), I have started
with an introduction to energy and the laws of “thermodynamics”, the science
of heat. Many readers may already have a good basic understanding of such
matters, and I beg your indulgence. In any case, I’ll take you on a brief
journey of the basics of energy—the basis and currency of everything—and
how it is used in the kitchen, mainly in the form of heat and electricity. We’ll
look at how energy originates and how it gets transformed all the way from
the power station until it becomes heat in the kitchen, where some of it is
used to cook and some of it is lost to the environment.
Once we have established the basics of heat energy, we’ll consider phys-
ical aspects of the basic ingredients that go into cooking, starting with the
amazing properties of water. We’ll look at coffee and tea, the colours of foods,
and lots of other unusual aspects of the raw ingredients.
Next, we’ll consider the physics and chemistry that goes on in the pot,
the frying pan, the oven, and anywhere else where our raw ingredients can
be turned into a hopefully palatable meal. This will form the main part
of the book and it will include examples of actual cooking which, I hope,
will help you see food preparation with a fresh eye and even surprise you in
some ways. Here I discuss various cooking tasks, in some detail at times, and
describe how stews, sauces, fries, and roasts take on their colour, aroma, and
taste. I have attempted to incorporate cooking methods from various parts
of the world but, being Greek myself, I have mainly focussed my discussion
on Eastern Mediterranean cooking. By the way, I have only used examples
and descriptions of foods using natural ingredients and do not discuss any of
the numerous artificial agents used for producing ready-made meals, such as
artificial emulsifiers, acidification agents, and all the chemistry that goes into
making nice-looking and tasty, but hardly natural (or naturally nutritious)
food.
Next, we’ll look at many of the ubiquitous kitchen appliances, devices,
machines, and materials in a modern kitchen. There will be quite a few
further surprises there too. By necessity, some of the discussions here may
duplicate certain comments I made during the cooking chapters, but they
are based on a more technical viewpoint.
8 G. Vekinis

Finally, we’ll talk about various miscellaneous subjects and odd aspects
of cooking and working in the kitchen that don’t fit anywhere else, but are
nevertheless intriguing and surprising as well.
Nearly all the chapters can be read individually and in a random order,
but I think they’ll be more satisfactory if you read them approximately in the
order presented. If you have a good grounding in physics, then you could
skip the first part on energy, thermodynamics, diffusion, etc. However, if you
persevere with it, you may also be surprised at certain nuances that are often
forgotten or taken for granted.
I should mention that experienced cooks and chefs may find some of my
descriptions of cooking processes too simplistic, so I hasten to emphasise that
the book is not meant to be a treatise on the methods of cookery, but an
attempt to elucidate the underlying physics.
Because many of the physical phenomena I discuss occur again and again
in various situations in the kitchen (and especially in cooking), it has been
necessary sometimes to repeat certain descriptions, but to avoid tiring the
reader, I always try to emphasise the extra dimensions that come into play in
each situation, so please bear with me.
Before I proceed, I must ask forgiveness from scientists and purists for
the frequent over-simplifications I have used in order to make my explana-
tions of physical phenomena a bit easier and clearer. I have done this in an
effort to avoid confusion and jargon. To atone for this, I have included more
precise explanations, related aspects, and other interesting bits of information
in footnotes and information boxes, where I thought it would enable a deeper
understanding and complement the points made in the text. In addition, I
have left out nearly all the equations describing the phenomena I discuss,
once again to avoid confusion and concentrate only on the physics. In some
cases, this means that I only mention and briefly describe the relevant law
without going much deeper.
Obviously, I have not attempted to include or discuss in any detail
advanced phenomena such as energy perturbations or waves or certain
quantum mechanical effects which may occur during cooking and elsewhere
in the kitchen, apart from stating them. This is simply because they are too
complicated and in any case wouldn’t add much to the discussions of the
main physical phenomena we encounter when cooking. If anyone wishes to
dig deeper, I suggest they consult one of the many good textbooks on physics.
During the preparation and writing of the book I had the pleasure of
receiving and discussing many ideas and tips from my wife Gwen and my
children Andrew and Stefani, and I thank them for those gems. I especially
 1 Introduction 9

enjoyed the many heated discussions on what is worth including and how to
go about it.
Finally, I want to stress that all the things I have written and discussed
in this book are my own opinions and interpretations of the physical
phenomena that occur in the kitchen, some of them perhaps not uncontro-
versial, and I have done so to the best of my understanding and ability based
on publicly available knowledge. It goes without saying that everything I have
written is my responsibility and mine alone.
So, without further delay, let’s enter the world of physics in the kitchen.
And the very first item on the menu and the most salient characteristic of all
our activities in the kitchen is the fact that everything is driven by energy.
 2
Building an Appetite—Energy: The Currency
of Life, Food, and … Everything Else

“Everything is energy”
Albert Einstein

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 11

Switzerland AG 2023
G. Vekinis, Physics in the Kitchen, Copernicus Books,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34407-7_2