Math in… Pasta

Noodles come in a variety of shapes, some simple and some fancy.

Because we typically eat hundreds of noodles in a single dish, they need to be easy to make in bulk. Can you see why these shapes might be straightforward to make?

Many noodles are made with the aid of an extruder, pushing dough through holed plates that shape its cross-section before cutting it into segments.

Can you guess what the noodles would look like if we used the pasta dies below?

Here are those pasta dies again, along with the noodles they produce:

Does anything surprise you about these?

Without some pasta-making experience, it can be tricky to predict how dough will twist and cup while passing through a hole! However, with the advantage of hindsight, you can probably puzzle out how each noodle moved through its die.

Sometimes efficiency requires rethinking how to do basic tasks.

To make the diagonal cut at the end of penne, for example, some extruders have angled surfaces to guide a fan-blade slice rather than attempting to "freehand" diagonal cuts.

What is your favorite noodle shape?

If you could design your own noodle, what would it look like and how might you make it?