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The Physics Of Water Is Central To Cooking, Because Food Is Mostly Water. All Steak That You Cook Is Actually Boiled On The Inside.

-Nathan Myhrvold

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The Physics Of Water

Nathan Myhrvold

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The Physics Of Water Is Central To Cooking, Because Food Is Mostly Water. All Steak That You Cook Is Actually Boiled On The Inside.

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One Of The Things That I Love To Do Is Travel Around The World And Look At Archaeological Sites. Because Archaeology Gives Us An Opportunity To Study Past Civilizations, And See Where They Succeeded And Where They Failed. Use Science To, You Know, Work Backwards And Say, 'well, Really, What Were They Thinking?'

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My Company Invents All Kinds Of New Technology In Lots Of Different Areas. And We Do That For A Couple Of Reasons. We Invent For Fun - Invention Is A Lot Of Fun To Do - And We Also Invent For Profit. The Two Are Related Because The Profit Actually Takes Long Enough That If It Isn't Fun, You Wouldn't Have The Time To Do It.

If You Had A Really Good - Battery, It Wouldn't Matter That The Sun Goes Down At Night And The Wind Stops Blowing Sometimes. But At The Moment, Battery Technology Is Nowhere Near Good Enough To Use At Utility Scale.

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The Physics Of Water Is Central To Cooking, Because Food Is Mostly Water. All Steak That You Cook Is Actually Boiled On The Inside.

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Funny Inspirational

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Pursuit Of Happiness

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What You Do On A Dinosaur Expedition Is You Hike And Look At The Ground. You Find Bones Sticking Out Of The Dirt And, Once You See Something, You Dig.

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Scientific Method

In Politics, Religion And Other Areas Of Culture, People Disagree On The Worth Of Competing Ideas. There Is No Equivalent To The Scientific Method That Can Determine In A Robust Way Which Ideas Match The Real World, And Which Ones Can Be Ruled Out. So Conflicting Ideologies Persist Indefinitely.

Politicians Don't Like To Face Unpleasant Realities. In Truth, Nobody Does, But As Individuals, We Have No Choice; If We Neglect To Plan Ahead, We Are Held Accountable. Fail To Meet Your Responsibilities At Work, And You Get Fired. Ignore Your Car's Gas Gauge, And You Get Stranded.

If You Take A Scotch Whiskey And Distill Out The Alcohol, What Is Left Has An Amazing Taste To It And Can Be Used As A Flavoring For A Dessert.

Three Things About Water Affect Almost All Of Cooking. First Are The Hydrogen Bonds, Which Is Why It Has An Incredibly High Boiling Point. Another Is That It's A Polar Molecule, So That It Dissolves A Lot Of Things, And There Are Things That Won't Mix With It. And Then There's How Much Energy It Takes To Heat Water.

A Blowtorch Is A Wonderful Thing. You Can Get One Of Those For About 25 Bucks At Home Depot. And There's A Ton Of Things That You Can Use A Blowtorch For, In Browning A Steak Or Touching Up The Browning Of A Chicken Or Making Creme Brulee.

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The Simplest Fix For Better Grilling Is To Line The Inside Of Your Barbecue With Tin Foil. It Dramatically Affects How Evenly The Heat Is Distributed. That Crusty Black Hibachi Or Weber Grill Is Doing Your Food No Favors.

Ultimately, My Ph.d. Is In Mathematical Physics, Focusing On Quantum Field Theory And Curved Space-time, And I Worked With Stephen Hawking.

If I Say I've Got Two Versions Of Word - That Old One From 1982 That's Perfect, With Zero Defects; Or The New One That's Got All This Cool New Stuff, But There Might Be A Few Bugs In It - People Always Want The New One. But I Wouldn't Want Them To Operate A Plane I Was On With Software That Happened To Be The Latest Greatest Release!

Crazy Ideas Sometimes Work, And The Technological Society That We Have Is Built On A Foundation Of Those Crazy Ideas That Work.

Micropayments Are Great If You Use Them For A Product Or Service With Certain Properties. It Must Be One Where You Can Get Away With Usage-based Pricing, And Where There Is A Strong Rationale For Making It Cheap, Yet Not Free.

I Wanted To Figure Out How Long To Cook Things. I Did Some Experiments And Then Wrote A Program Using Mathematica To Model How Heat Is Transferred Through Food.

By Burning Nuclear Waste As Fuel, We Believe We Can Power The United States Cleanly For Hundreds Of Years Without Ever Touching New Resources.

Among Modern Occupations, Only Cult Leaders And Tv Weathermen Rival The Technological Visionary's Ability To Retain Credibility Despite All Evidence To The Contrary.

If I Want Popularity, I Go To A Chef's Convention.

New Online Formats Gutted The Newspaper-ad Business. Why Pore Over Tiny Print Looking For A Job In The Want Ads When You Can Tap A Few Keywords Into Monster.com, Then Click Through And Apply? Why Pay A Steep Per-character Rate For A Classified When You Can Hawk A Whole Garage Full Of Used Stuff On Ebay Or Craigslist For Free?

The Next Purchase Is Too Little Too Late. Apple Is Already Dead.

The Techniques Of Being An Internet Visionary Are Just Like Those Of Lower-tech Fortunetellers Through The Ages. A Technological Visionary Must Tell People What They Want To Hear, Because Your Company's Stock Won't Rise If You Spout An Unpopular Vision To Analysts.

Intellectual Ventures Is A Company That Invests In Invention.

Regardless Of How It's Done, Transaction Costs Will Continue To Plummet As Computers Get More Powerful. Low Transaction Costs Are A Wonderful Thing If You're In The Transaction Business. They're Wonderful For Consumers Too, Making It Cheaper And Easier To Buy Things And Creating New Things To Buy.

Don't Let The Secret Recipe Die With The Inventor.

Most Visions Of Extraterrestrial Life Are Actually Steeped In Human Hubris. The Fictional Extraterrestrials Of 'star Trek' Or A Hundred Other Space Operas Are Less Alien Than Many Of My Neighbors. And Funny, The Ones Running The Place Are Mostly Waspish Men.

Chefs Think About What It's Like To Make Food. Being A Scientist In The Kitchen Is About Asking Why Something Works, And How It Works.

I Have A Very Pragmatic Approach To Diets. Ones You Can't Stick To Don't Do You Any Good. Some People Say, 'just Eat Half Of What's On Your Plate,' But I Can't Do That!

Wine Lovers Have Known For Centuries That Decanting Wine Before Serving It Often Improves Its Flavor. Whatever The Dominant Process, The Traditional Decanter Is A Rather Pathetic Tool To Accomplish It. A Few Years Ago, I Found I Could Get Much Better Results By Using An Ordinary Kitchen Blender.

Nobody Wants A Prediction That The Future Will Be More Or Less Like The Present, Even If That Is, Statistically Speaking, An Excellent Prediction.

Many Of The Things The Slow Food People Honor Were Innovations Within Historical Times. Somebody Had To Be The First European To Eat A Tomato.

If People Don't Find What You Are Doing Threatening, Then It Is Probably Not Very Important.

It's Impossible That We're Alone In The Universe. Every Time We Think We're More Special Than Others, We're Proven Wrong.

If You Have A Block Of Ballistics Gelatin And A High-speed Camera, Pretty Soon Somebody Gets A Gun!

We're More Familiar With What Economists Call An English Auction - Prices Start Low And Rise As People Bid. However, There Is Also The Dutch Auction, Where Prices Start High And Go Lower Until Somebody Bites. Movies Are Sold To The Audience Via A Very Slow Dutch Auction, Where Each Phase Between Price Drops Can Last Weeks Or Months.

The Whole Hardware Industry Has Experienced The Phenomenon In Which Every Time Computers Get Cheaper, They Appeal To A New Set Of Users; Every Time They Get More Powerful, Old Customers Upgrade.

Technological 'revolutions' Don't Really Overthrow Anything - They Simply Append A New And Dynamic Market To That Which Went Before.

The Way Moore's Law Occurs In Computing Is Really Unprecedented In Other Walks Of Life. If The Boeing 747 Obeyed Moore's Law, It Would Travel A Million Miles An Hour, It Would Be Shrunken Down In Size, And A Trip To New York Would Cost About Five Dollars. Those Enormous Changes Just Aren't Part Of Our Everyday Experience.

When I Was About Nine Years Old, I Announced To My Mother That I Was Going To Cook Thanksgiving Dinner. And I Went To The Library And Got This Whole Pile Of Books. I'd Love To Say It All Turned Out Great. It Didn't. But, Sort Of, From That Point On, Whenever There Was Serious Cooking At Home, I Was The One Who Did It.

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