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Imagine if corn kernels could be grown the size of baseballs......
You'd go to the movies and buy "a" popcorn, seeing as it'd be about the size of a soccer ball when popped. No longer would there be the problem of unpopped kernels at the bottom of the barrel. Plus, you could just easily pay by
the weight of the kernel, as if you were purchasing bulk food. The popcorn could be made fresh right before your eyes...... I see a problem though: you might want to wear eye goggles or something like that when near the popping. Regular kernels are kinda loud -- imagine what these would be like. I guess there'd have to be a soundproof popping chamber in the movie theater, otherwise you'd still hear the popping (or kabooming in this case) coming from the lobby.
Butter would come in a little squirt jar, like those lemon squirters for fish, so you could apply the butter at just the right spot.
I want big popcorn.
From the physics laboratory, giant popcorn!
http://inq.philly.c...azine/POPCORN14.htm
No genetic engineering required, but results are still modest. [Uncle Nutsy, Oct 30 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]
[link]
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I'm not sure I'd want to chew through inches of solid popcorn material. |
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What is it that makes popcorn turn itself inside-out (and get all white and puffy) rather than simply bursting into bits as one would expect? Could this mechanism ever hope to scale to the size you're suggesting? |
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I think you might be asking a little much of current GM technology to achieve such vast changes, as well. |
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I think Wes means apply the butter at the right spot in the movie. |
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you know the snackfood Corn Nuts? it comes in flavors regular, nacho cheese, bbq. boy, i love that snack. |
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here is what is it: giant corn kernels, toasted. so you might instead take your giant corn kernels and pop them. |
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once i bought a pack that offered, on the back, to send you the giant corn seeds. of course i jumped at the chance and sent my SASE. i never rece3ived them though. |
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Wow! Awesome link. Thanks, Uncle Nutsy. The scary thing is that at my lab in university I have access to a furnace (usually used for sintering of ceramics) that could be used for this. It's a controlled atmosphere furnace, so you can change the gases, the temperature, and pump the pressure down to near zero. Must try this.... |
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The way popcorn works: just before it pops, the moisture inside a kernel is still liquid, but very hot. When the husk breaks and releases the pressure, the superheated moisture turns instantly into steam, which "foams" the starchy inside. You can do this with pretty much any grain by heating it in a pressure cooker then suddenly releasing the pressure. Rice crispies are made this way. |
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Wow. That's cool info, rmutt. How about a giant rice krispie? |
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...or you could ban all food from the cinema and not disturb everyone around you. Sure, there would be thousands of cleaners and snack salesmen out of business, but you could offset this by the number of people who would flock back because they don't have to wade through lakes of flat cola and scree slopes of discarded popcorn. |
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Giant corn exist. The giant white corn from Peru. It has the biggest kernels you have ever seen. Of course they are not the size of basketballs but they are really big compared to regular corn. The kernels are the size of a quarter. A special micro-climate in the Sacred Valley of the Incas makes it possible. It is the only place in the world where it can grow to reach that size. Nowhere else; and believe, they have tried. |
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[rmutt]//You can do this with pretty much any grain by heating it in a pressure cooker then suddenly releasing the pressure.// Does this mean we can take a big vat of corn mush, increase the pressure and temperature to the right point, rapidly decrease the pressure, and get a giant piece of popcorn? Can someone make me one? Why doesn't this exist? |
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<sudden realization>Baked. Rice cakes are this exactly - they even have popcorn cakes.</sr> |
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Nothing. Popcorn is a strain of corn, a flint corn, in its own right. |
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[Lul] What kind of a person would suggest "no movie snacks". I bet you don't believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny either. Perhaps suggest the theatre make their staff actually clean up. P.S. I hope you like coal. |
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Have you ever seen the Woody Allan movie -"Sleeper"?
They grow vegetables the size of people instead of fields of small ones. They also know (in the future) that foods with high saturated fat contents such as cheesburgers, are actually healthier for you than all of those health kick diets of the 21st century. And they have robots.. and the orgasmatron. The future is going to be so cool. |
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I, too, have seen the future. 's why I eat steak and eggs and smoke*.
*I dont "eat" smoke. |
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Dr Atkins has been vindicated. And he lived to see it. |
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// I think you might be asking a little much of current GM technology to achieve such vast changes, as well. // |
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What, like Honda could do it better? ;-) |
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