Explained: Why spaghetti never breaks in two

Ever wonder why, when you're breaking dry spaghetti, it never breaks perfectly in half? Of course you haven't, but now that I ask the question, aren't you extremely curious to know why? My good friend and dentist Eric Salmon recently emailed me links to B. Audoly and S. Neukirch's fascinating Web site, Breaking Spaghetti, which solves, once and for all, this kitchen mystery.

They write:
Bent dry spaghetti do not break in half but instead in three or more pieces. With the aim to explain this surprising phenomenon, we studied a related problem, namely the dynamics of an elastic rod that is bent quasi-statically and then suddenly set free. Counter-intuitively, we find that the mere release of the rod induces a stress increase. The multiple breaking of bent rods, like dry spaghetti pasta, can then be understood as a cascade of releases (loss of cohesion upon breakings) followed by stress increases leading to new cracks.

Beyond having the quotidien so elegantly explained, what's really great are all the films shot on high-speed film of spaghetti pushed beyond its limits.
[LINK: Breaking Spaghetti]
[LINK: Scientific study]
[LINK: Another good site on the topic]