Mayonnaise Helps Scientists Study Nuclear Fusion

Mayonnaise is not just for sandwiches. It’s also helping scientists understand nuclear fusion.

Researchers at Lehigh University, led by mechanical engineer Arindam Banerjee, are using mayonnaise to study how materials behave in extreme conditions. The texture of mayo is unique. It acts both like a solid and a liquid. If you shake it gently, it stays the same. But if you hit it hard, it changes shape or even breaks apart.

This dual behavior is similar to what happens in nuclear fusion experiments. In these experiments, lasers are used to heat a metal capsule containing fuel. The goal is to get the fuel’s atomic nuclei to fuse together, creating energy. However, if the metal capsule breaks apart before the fusion occurs, the experiment fails.

To better understand this, the scientists mixed mayonnaise with air and put it in a spinning wheel. The spinning created a force that pushed the mayo into the air. After stopping the wheel, they observed what happened to the mayo. Did it go back to its original shape, change shape, or break apart? This helped them determine the point where mayo shifts from acting like a solid to acting like a liquid.

The behavior of the mayo is similar to that of the molten metal in fusion capsules. If the metal becomes too liquid-like before fusion happens, the gas inside could escape, ruining the experiment.

There is one funny side effect of this research. The team often buys a lot of mayonnaise at the grocery store, which raises some eyebrows. Banerjee says they often get asked why they need so much mayo.