Let’s say we have an unlimited budget and we don’t care much about practicality, and our goal is to be able to receive an egg, which has been boiled for an unknown duration, and determine its doneness, which I would define as how liquid vs solid the yolk is, without damaging the egg or rendering it inedible.
what are are options for building a device or otherwise making this determination?
Ultrasound is an easy way.
Ultrasound satisfies neither the budgetary nor practicality constraints. You want small angle neutron scattering.
There’s the old “spin the egg” trick. A cooked egg spins but a fresh egg stalls right away. But it doesn’t tell degree of doneness.
Might X-ray show opaque vs clear, if the done-cooked portion is not so transparent?
Spin the egg then ever so briefly put your hand on it to stop it. If its boiled (solid) it will stay stopped. If its raw (liquid) it will resume spinning. But as you mentioned, it can’t tell the degree of solidness or liquidness.
As long as practicality is not an issue, just cut the egg in half and see how done it is. If it is not done to the desired level, discard it and do the same with the next egg until one is found that is cooked the right amount.
It already exists.
It already exists.
Ann Reardon
First segment.
Wouldn’t it be better to have it as a realtime control system rather than testing the egg after the fact?
Less wasteful.
Lots of ideas. Ultrasound, neutron diffraction. X rays? Terawave scanning?
This looks like a prime candidate for the ig Nobels…
Optically transparent and X-ray transparent are not related. X-radiography is sensitive to density, which is probably not much different between raw and cooked. Small-angle X-ray scattering is sensitive to structural changes, but in order not to waste eggs, you’ll want to use the full USAXS/SAXS/WAXS suite at Argonne National Lab.