Get a loud of this shit, taken from CNN.com:
Scientists solve unpopped popcorn
Top pop or not to pop lies in the hull
Thursday, April 21, 2005 Posted: 11:42 AM EDT (1542 GMT)
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (AP) — Eat your way to the bottom of almost any bag of popcorn and there they are: the rock-hard, jaw-rattling unpopped kernels known as old maids.
The nuisance kernels have kept many a dentist busy, but their days could be numbered: Scientists say they now know why some popcorn kernels resist popping into puffy white globes.
It’s long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center — about 15 percent — to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel’s explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.
Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode.
“They’re sort of like little pressure vessels that explode when the pressure reaches a certain point,” said Bruce Hamaker, a Purdue professor of food chemistry. “But if too much moisture escapes, it loses its ability to pop and just sits there.”
The findings may help popcorn breeders select the best varieties — or create new ones — with superior hulls that yield few, if any, unpopped kernels. But for now, there’s no way to screen out potential old maids before they end up in bags of popcorn.
Hamaker and his associates compared the microwave popping performance of 14 Indiana-grown popcorn varieties and examined the crystalline structure of the translucent hulls of both the popped kernels and the duds.
In the varieties popped, the percentage of unpopped kernels ranged from 4 percent in premium brands to 47 percent in the cheaper ones.
The findings could be good news for people who savor the snack and those who grow the 17 billion quarts of popcorn sold each year in the United States.
Wendy Boersema Rappel, a spokeswoman for the Chicago-based Popcorn Board, said popcorn processors are always looking for ways to improve their product, including reducing the number of old maids.
“It’s one of life’s annoyances — it’s not rocking anyone’s world, but our members always like to improve their product,” Rappel said.
Hamaker said two popcorn manufacturers have already expressed interest in Purdue’s findings.
The research, funded by Purdue’s Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research, which Hamaker directs, has been published online and will appear in the July 11 edition of the journal BioMacromolecules.
I pretty much put this on that list of things we really didn’t need nor did we really need to know. This is pretty much neck to neck with seedless watermelons. I mean it utterly begs the question: “WHY!” And not “WHY” with a question mark but “WHY” with an exclamation mark. What scientist devotes their time to finding this secret out. Why can’t we have these “scientist” working on more important things like cancer or AIDS. I’m not trying to make a joke about this though. Did anyone really need to know this? I mean, I guess its good to finally know why those damn kernels never popped but geez is it really all that important? I mean I guess after finding that out I can actually sleep tonight.
What a waste of time. I think the entire human race can now benifit from knowing that at least one of our great mysteries is finally solved. Now next on the list for these particular scientist, finding out where those damn socks go.
–Socram