{"id":5475,"date":"2011-03-23T09:59:41","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T09:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2011\/03\/23\/quantum-kitchen-ought-to-mean\/"},"modified":"2011-03-23T09:59:41","modified_gmt":"2011-03-23T09:59:41","slug":"quantum-kitchen-ought-to-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2011\/03\/23\/quantum-kitchen-ought-to-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Quantum Kitchen&#8221; Ought to Mean Something Else"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am less enthralled by the &#8220;molecular gastronomy&#8221; thing than someone with my geek credentials ought to be. As a result, I was a little disappointed when I clicked the link (from <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JenLucPiquant\">Jennifer Ouellette on Twitter<\/a>) to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/underwire\/2011\/03\/marcels-quantum-kitchen\">this Wired story about a new tv show<\/a> called <cite>Marcel&#8217;s Quantum Kitchen<\/cite>. Because, you know, there are much more fun things that the combination of &#8220;Quantum&#8221; and &#8220;Kitchen&#8221; could evoke:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A kitchen whose dishes all come in discrete and indivisible portions. You can&#8217;t eat half and take the other half home&#8211; it&#8217;s all or nothing&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>You can either know what you&#8217;re making, or how long it will take to cook, but not both at once&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>A kitchen where a watched pot <em>really<\/em> never boils, thanks to the <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/12\/quantum_zeno_effect_the_movie.php\">Quantum Zeno Effect<\/a>&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Is your entree cooked, or still raw? You won&#8217;t know until you cut into it&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>You can&#8217;t know in advance whether you&#8217;re getting beef or chicken, but you know with certainty that whatever you got, the diner at the other end of the room got the same thing&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>A kitchen whose products are indistinguishable from those of a classical kitchen at high temperature, but diverge dramatically at low temperature. The liquid nitrogen ice cream is like nothing you&#8217;ve ever seen&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And so on. Feel free to add your own quantum cookery items in the comments.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>(Somewhat more seriously, you could probably cover a decent amount of modern physics through looking at things that go on in the typical kitchen. Blackbody radiation from heating coils, phase transitions both boiling and freezing, excitation of vibrational transitions with microwaves, entropy of mixing fluids, etc. This is not a terribly original observation, I know, but most science-of-cooking things focus on chemistry, rather than physics&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am less enthralled by the &#8220;molecular gastronomy&#8221; thing than someone with my geek credentials ought to be. As a result, I was a little disappointed when I clicked the link (from Jennifer Ouellette on Twitter) to this Wired story about a new tv show called Marcel&#8217;s Quantum Kitchen. Because, you know, there are much&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2011\/03\/23\/quantum-kitchen-ought-to-mean\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Quantum Kitchen&#8221; Ought to Mean Something Else<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146,34,7,37,23,11,24,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atoms_and_molecules","category-food","category-physics","category-pop_culture","category-quantum_optics","category-science","category-silliness","category-television","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}