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Tapping a tomato makes it ring like a bell, albeit a highly dampened one. The
vibrations could be used as a means of grading the fruit for firmness if it
wasn’t for the tomato’s irregular internal structure. Tapping it around its
equator at different points produces different types of vibration, so it’s
impossible to grade. Researchers at the Laboratory of Agricultural Machinery and
Processing in Leuven, Belgium, have a solution (Mathematics and Computers in
Simulation, vol 56, p 385). They’ve found that simply tapping a tomato at
its “south pole” always produces the same type of vibration, so grading will be…