People of all ages love spaghetti, but many people don’t realize that this much beloved food has for years helped scientists to explore deep questions about the universe. Spaghetti science can be used to better understand the properties of matter, the nature of waves, the frequency of vibrations, and elasticity. A recent BBC article reviewed some fascinating spaghetti science experiments such as why you can’t slurp up a strand of spaghetti without getting sauce on your face and why a curved piece of spaghetti that is removed from a pot stays curved when it dries.
The Step by Step Science team also loves spaghetti so we decided to dive into some spaghetti science ourselves. We wanted to explore how different factors affect the period and frequency of a mass oscillating at the end of a piece of spaghetti. We used three different types of spaghetti, three different masses of clay and three different lengths of spaghetti for our experiment.
This hands-on experiment provides a creative connection to real-world situations. By learning about oscillating masses, students gain a deeper understanding of important physics concepts that apply to real life, such as how force, mass, and motion are related through Newton’s laws. Many disciplines of science incorporate an understanding of oscillations. Engineers use these concepts to design buildings and bridges that can withstand earthquakes. Oscillations help clocks keep time and allow smartphones to work with radio waves.
Watch our YouTube video and see if you can identify how each of our three variables — the type of spaghetti, the weight of the mass, and the length of spaghetti – affects the frequency and period of a mass oscillating at the end of the spaghetti.
Our oscillating spaghetti experiment was adapted from the San Francisco Exploratorium Science Snack experiment called Spaghetti Resonance. The Exploratorium has a great collection of Science Snacks that showcase the work of women in math and science. If you’d like to dive deeper into our experiment, you can find all the details and a worksheet to guide your explorations in our TPT store: Oscillating Spaghetti, Making YOU the Scientist. Hope you have fun with your own spaghetti science experiments!
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