Sweet success at annual holiday lecture

In a Science Center lecture hall, Joseph professor of engineering and applied mathematics Howard Stone spoke about physics to a crowd considerably more fidgety than the students he normally teaches.

He instructed them to join him in an experiment. In unison, hundreds of envelopes rustled, hundreds of sets of teeth bit in with a small crunch (this was a tasting experiment), and then a chorus welled up: “Ewwww!”

Stone’s students that morning were children and their parents, attending a free public lecture sponsored by Harvard’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), among others. The substance of the experiment was a raw cocoa bean, delicious enough by some standards, but a taste apparently not yet acquired by the under-10 set.

Read the full story at Harvard Magazine ...