The fractal geometry of labor saving technical change

["Lisa & Ian Murray" <seamus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[Just how many food testers are in the work farce?]



<http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns227049>
The big crunch

TESTERS of cornflakes and potato snacks may soon be superseded by a
"crunchmeter" that uses fractal geometry to gauge their crispiness.

Developed by food scientists at the Hebrew University in Rehovot, Israel,
the device consists of a chamber in which a sample of food or other material
is gradually crushed. Microphones pick up the noise produced and generate a
graph plotting decibels against time.

The result is a rugged line, made up of spikes and troughs. A computer
expresses the wiggly line as a fractal dimension. In fractal geometry, a
straight line has a dimension, or "fractal number" of one and a plane a
dimension of two. The more wiggly a line is, the more it fills up the plane
in which it lies--and the closer its dimension is to two.

The crunchier a potato chip is, explains Amos Nussinovitch, leader of the
team that created the crunchmeter, the longer it will continue to produce
noise as it is smashed into smaller and smaller pieces. This produces a more
complex curve with a higher fractal number. He says a really crunchy
cornflake will get a score of about 1.5.

[snip]