"Feynman’s kitchen experiment remained unresolved until 2005, when physicists from France pieced together a theory to describe the forces at work when spaghetti — and any long, thin rod — is bent. They found that when a stick is bent evenly from both ends, it will break near the center, where it is most curved. This initial break triggers a “snap-back” effect and a bending wave, or vibration, that further fractures the stick. Their theory, which won the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize, seemed to solve Feynman’s puzzle. But a question remained: Could spaghetti ever be coerced to break in two?"
That explains why the stresses present always split the tube in more than two pieces, but it does not prove that there is no possible way to get it to split in only two.
This paper demonstrates a way for it to only split in two.
And therefore is a significant advance over the original.
"Feynman’s kitchen experiment remained unresolved until 2005, when physicists from France pieced together a theory to describe the forces at work when spaghetti...But a question remained: Could spaghetti ever be coerced to break in two?"
