Humble pizza taken for a toss!

Scientists have unlocked the physics of the perfect pizza toss,which they claim could help design micro motors less than a hair across.

Scientists have unlocked the physics of the perfect pizza toss,which they claim could help design micro motors less than a hair across and thereby revolutionise medical treatment for people suffering strokes.

For the study,an international team has videotaped a professional pizza tosser at work,then calculated how best to describe the way the dough travels through the air,including how much the dough rotates,how quickly it spins,stability and the energy efficiency of the toss itself.

The result: A set of non-linear differential equations that captures the art of pizza tossing. “If you toss a pizza dough one

toss at a time that is,if you toss then catch — your hands should move in a helical fashion,like they are moving along a spiral,a curved line laid along a cylinder.

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“If you are tossing the pizza continuously,not stopping to catch it and stop every time,then your hands should move in circles,” team member James Friend of Monash University said.

According to the scientists,the model could help in the designing the next generation of standing wave ultrasonic motors (SWUMs),which operate on similar principles as pizza tossing.

The tiny motors have the potential to be used for minimally invasive neuro-microsurgery. In these electric motors,the fixed component,the stator,is made to vibrate ultrasonically,and this causes the moveable part,the disc-like rotor,to be “tossed” — both rotated and lifted.

“The SWUM works exactly like a pizza chef tossing dough,with the hands representing the vibrating stator of the SWUM and the dough representing the rotor. The difference is only in the details: a chef tosses dough,about once a second,a few tens of centimeters into the air. A SWUM tosses the rotor a few million times a second into the air,” Prof Friend said.