Must not have been rhombic dodecahedra :-) Jim On 12/10/06, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
FYI --
December 10, 2006
Salt That Doesn't Stick
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Everyone knows the havoc that humidity wreaks on salt. You pick up a saltshaker, tip it upside down and nothing.
The problem is molecular. Salt grains are cube shaped, so it doesn't take much to get them to stack together like Legos. Salt producers have created nonsticking salt before by adding chemicals to prevent binding. But this year, in the July issue of Crystal Growth and Design, a team of Indian scientists announced that they had discovered a better way to attack the problem: they produced salt that is round.
To accomplish this, they added the amino acid glycine to a pan of brine and then let the salty liquid evaporate. The resulting crystals were shaped like dodecahedrons: 12-sided grains. In this nearly spherical form, the grains no longer stacked like bricks but like oranges in a sack. The researchers put some of the round salt into a container, left it for a year and found that it still poured freely.
The glycine has a side effect: it makes the salt slightly sweeter. Pushpito K. Ghosh, one of the lead scientists on the project, claims he can't detect it "And I've eaten a lot of it!" but he suspects that chefs might.
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