Spaghetti in a pot of water

Look, I can’t pretend to be the most worldly person ― after all, I only just realised the “correct” way to use an electric toothbrush; and the fact that IKEA is actually an acronym and not a Swedish name recently threw me for six.

So I hope you can forgive me for never quite being sure how that annoying tidemark of salt appears on the sides of my pot after cooking pasta or rice in it, despite understanding the basics of evaporation.

But I can at least take comfort in the fact that my bafflement ― why does the salt cluster in a circle before being boiled, and why do the rings take different shapes even when I use the same amount of salt on the same heat? ― has been the foundation of scientific research.

Recently, the American Insitute of Physics shared an experiment run by........

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