Enlarge / Meals will generally get caught to a heated floor, even when oil or a nonstick frying pan is used. Scientists have concluded that convection could also be accountable. (credit score: Dan Tentler/through Getty Photos)
House cooks around the globe have relied on nonstick cookware for many years for fast and simple cleanup after making ready meals. However generally meals will get caught to the middle of nonstick pans anyway. A new paper printed within the journal Physics of Fluids presents a possible clarification—meals sticks due to the identical underlying mechanism that provides rise to the espresso ring impact and so-called “wine tears.”
The primary nonstick frying pans have been made doable by the invention of Teflon in 1938 by a chemist named Roy Plunkett, who was researching doable new chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants as a part of a three way partnership with DuPont. In April of that yr, Plunkett later recalled, his assistant chosen one of many cylinders they have been utilizing to retailer tetrafluoroethylene gasoline (TFE) at dry-ice temperatures till the canisters have been able to be chlorinated for his or her experiments. When the assistant opened the valve, the gasoline didn’t move underneath its personal strain from the container, as anticipated.
Puzzled, the researchers opened the container solely to search out the gasoline was gone. In its stead, they discovered a white powder. The TFE had polymerized right into a waxy strong referred to as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which proved to have some attention-grabbing properties: it was chemically inert and heat-resistant, and it had very low floor friction. Maybe it wasn’t helpful as a refrigerant, however it proved to be a terrific nonstick coating.
Learn eight remaining paragraphs | Feedback
