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TESTERS of cornflakes and potato snacks may soon be superseded by a
鈥渃runchmeter鈥� 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 鈥渇ractal number鈥� 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鈥攁nd 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.

In crunchy foods, Nussinovitch suggests, the crunchmeter might replace expert
food testers. 鈥淥nce you鈥檝e established that your potato chip tastes best at a
crunch level of 1.4, say, you can use the crunchmeter instead of tasters for
quality control,鈥� he predicts. A local cereal maker is said to be following up
the idea.