Hi everyone! Welcome back to Cody's lab.
So I just got a request to pop popcorn
in a vacuum chamber and I thought, well I have
a vacuum chamber, I have some popcorn
and I have a high-powered laser that can pop corn.
Theoretically the expanding gas from the
water vapor should make it fluffier.
At least, that's the idea.
Let's see what happens.
Can I put these over the lens?
I can, I can put these laser goggles over the lens and
I'll just look through the camera, that way
the camera can see it better.
So first things first is to pop one of
these at normal atmospheric pressure and see what it does.
Alright... umm... obviously I'm gonna figure out a
different way to actually pop the kernels,
my laser just seems to burn through it.
So I may have spent the better part of
the morning wiring a hot plate into the
vacuum chamber before Kanyon reminded
me that I have a vacuum chamber
that I can put on the stove.
So, without further adieu...
...let's pour in some oil...
...and a scoop of popcorn kernels and let's see how it pops.
Let's do it once without the lid and once with it
vacuumed down and let's compare the kernels.
Ok, so I got a couple of 'em popped already.
There goes one.
You can see there's a little bit of bubbling going on around the kernels
Oh dear some of 'em are actually leaving...
I might have to cover the pot.
Yeah, they're popping at atmospheric pressure.
Oh, they're not done yet.
Ok, it looks like we're done popping, we got a
bunch of corn, basically what i expected.
I'm actually going to count out about 50
kernels or so at random, I'm going to put
them into a glass, that way you can see
kind of how much volume we've got.
So there we go, 50 corns at popped atmospheric
pressure and I've cleaned out my pot, as you can see.
I'm gonna throw in the same amount of
corns, same amount of oil but this time I'm going
to turn on the vacuum pump and suck out all the air
so now that I've got the air pumping out
I can see that they're bubbling a little
bit more dramatically.
I imagine they're bubbling the same amount but the gas
is just expanding more because of the lower pressure.
Interesting to see if they pop at all.
Okay we've got some pops coming up
Excellent, and you know what, they do look a
little bigger but not a whole lot.
Let's actually shut this vacuum pump off so we can hear this.
You can still hear the corn popping.
Looks like the popping is complete,
I'm going to just slowly let in the air
so that I don't smash them from the atmospheric pressure
They already look like there's more volume of corn in there
But let's count some out and let's compare it
inside the glass.
So there is definitely a clear difference here. See
these are the ones that were popped in
the vacuum and these the ones that were
popped in normal atmospheric pressure.
Just the average size of the kernels were larger.
How 'bout that?
In fact if you look at the rest of the corn,
here's the ones that were popped at
normal atmospheric pressure and here's
ones that were popped in the vacuum.
I think actually more of the kernels
even popped inside the vacuum chamber.
Which would make sense because pressure
differential is greater, you have a more
chance of it actually popping.
So? How 'bout that?
It seems that the idea of having a lower
ambient pressure so there's more room
for the steam to expand into does result
in a larger corn.
Uh, I was originally thinking that the corn might even
expand bigger than this but I guess it
makes sense that there's only so much
that the steam can expand before it
cools off and the corn solidifies.
So, there you go.
Cooking corn in a vacuum does make larger corn.
Hope you enjoyed! I'll see you next time
So it's pretty obvious from which one
you're eating more of but, why do you
like the vacuum corn more?
It's just... fluffier.
I mean they're both good but... yeah...