TESTERS of cornflakes and potato snacks may soon be superseded by a
“crunchmeter” that uses fractal geometry to gauge their crispiness.
Developed by food scientists at the Hebrew University in Rehovot, Israel, the
device consists of a chamber in which a sample of food or other material is
gradually crushed. Microphones pick up the noise produced and generate a graph
plotting decibels against time.
The result is a rugged line, made up of spikes and troughs. A computer
expresses the wiggly line as a fractal dimension. In fractal geometry, a
straight line has a dimension, or “fractal number” of one…
