Popcorn and Pasta Do You Know?

# There are lots of things all around us

# Exciting things that surround us

# But how does it work? Do you know?

# How is it made? Do you know?

# Things that go up, things that go down

# Things that go pop, things that go round

# With special cameras to show you inside

# It's going to be a big surprise

# But how does it work? Do you know?

# How is it made? Do you know?

# Do you know? Let's find out! #

Hello! I'm Maddie, and today, I've come to the cinema!

I love watching movies,

but there's one treat I like to have most when I'm watching a film.

Can you guess what it is?

Yes, it's popcorn, of course.

Thank you.

Do you like popcorn?

But have you ever wondered how popcorn works?

Why and how does it pop?

Let's find out.

When we eat popcorn, it looks like this.

Soft, white and fluffy.

They look a bit like little clouds, don't they?

But it starts out like this, as pieces of corn that we call kernels.

But to turn this into popcorn, we need to cook it so that it gets hot.

This is microwave popcorn,

and inside the bag are lots of kernels of corn

like the ones I've just shown you.

And we're going to cook it inside the microwave.

You might even cook popcorn like this at home.

Remember, you should always get a grown-up

to help you use the microwave.

Nothing's happening yet, but that's because we need to wait for

those kernels of corn to get really hot.

It smells really good already, though!

POPPING

Can you hear that?

The corn has started to pop, turning it into popcorn!

Oh!

The popping has slowed down, so do you know what that means?

It means the popcorn is nearly ready.

BEEPING

It's ready!

Let's have a look, shall we?

Oh, it's steamy and hot and it smells incredible.

Careful - make sure you get a grown-up to do this bit

for you because it's very hot.

Mm! And there they are - ready to eat.

Sh!

But what happens inside the bag?

How does a small kernel of corn turn into a piece of popcorn like this?

Every kernel of corn has a hard shell on the outside

and a soft layer of white stuff called starch on the inside.

And inside the starch, there's a tiny droplet of water.

When the corn is heated, the starch melts and the drop of water

starts to expand, which means it gets bigger.

Eventually, it gets so hot, it starts to turn into steam,

like when water boils in the kettle.

The steam builds up inside the kernel of corn

and pushes against the hard shell.

Eventually, it can't hold it any more

and the pressure bursts the shell with a pop.

As it pops, the starch pours out, and immediately cools into

the soft white bit we see when we look at popcorn.

Let's see it for real, shall we? My special camera will show us how.

Let's take a look.

Because I couldn't put my special camera in the microwave,

I filmed this popcorn being cooked in a pan.

It pops exactly the same way.

Wow! There they go. See how high the corn jumps.

It's very quick. Let's see it again in super-slow motion.

Can you see the kernels heating up?

As the kernel of corn gets hotter and hotter,

so does that little droplet of water inside.

It grows bigger and bigger inside until it turns into steam

and just has to burst out, pushing the white starch out with it.

Amazing!

I loved seeing how popcorn works.

What was your favourite bit?

Can you remember the name

for a piece of corn before it turns into popcorn?

That's right - it's a kernel.

Did you hear the sound the corn made when it popped?

POPPING

It was loud, wasn't it?

And did you see the popcorn popping in slow motion?

It jumped really high!

Now, I've got my popcorn ready to snack on later, but first

I need to make my dinner, and I'm going to have my favourite - pasta.

Do you like pasta?

I love all the different shapes and sizes,

from small tubes

to little shells...

and, of course, spaghetti.

Pasta first came from Italy,

but now you can buy it everywhere in the shops.

You can buy fresh pasta, even dried pasta, like this,

or pasta sauces in jars.

But what's in pasta and how is it made?

Let's find out.

It all starts with a giant pasta-making machine,

and we're going to find out how dried pasta like this is made.

This is a pasta factory, and all these machines mean it's very noisy.

In this factory, pasta is made from two ingredients -

water and something called semolina. This is semolina here.

It looks like a yellow powder, but it's made from

a type of wheat called durum wheat that grows in fields.

It's also used to make some breakfast cereals.

But when you mix water and semolina together, you get pasta.

But we're going to need a lot more semolina than this.

These huge tanks are full of semolina.

Each one can hold about 150 tonnes' worth.

That's the same as about 150 cars, but how does all that semolina

get from the tanks to inside the factory?

The semolina travels along this grey pipe,

and into the pasta-making machine, where it will be mixed with water.

Water comes into the machine through this tank,

and it's mixed with the semolina inside this silver tube.

They're spun around together to make pasta dough.

Here it comes! This is what the mixture looks like.

This is the pasta dough, but at the moment,

it just looks like a pasta sausage.

We want it to be a squiggly shape, and for that,

we need a special cutter.

This metal disc is called a die,

and the pasta dough is pushed through the die

and all these little holes,

and that's what gives the pasta its special, squiggly shape.

Let's see what happens to the dough as it's pushed through the die.

Look at that!

Can you see the golden pasta

squiggling out of all the little holes in the die?

It's like long, blonde curly hair growing out of the machine.

It looks really fun, but it's too long.

That wouldn't fit on your plate for your dinner, would it?

So we need to chop it into smaller bite-sized pieces.

The cutter chops the pasta into the perfect sized pieces.

And now they're tumbling down this slide,

ready to go onto the next stage of the machine.

Look at all those cut pieces of pasta.

The machine is bouncing them up and down to spread them out.

Let's use my special camera to get a closer look.

The machine is bouncing the pasta,

and it's making the pasta look like it's wiggling like worms.

The pasta is now the right size and shape, but it's still not finished.

To make it hard, like the dried pasta you get at the shop,

it needs to be dried.

The soft pasta falls into the drier up there

and then it travels all the way through to come out the other end.

Just look how enormous the dryer is!

Let's see just how big the dryer is, shall we?

One, two, three,

four, five, six,

seven, eight, nine, ten!

It's ten paces big!

The pasta-making machine is all controlled by a computer,

and this shows us how the pasta is moving inside the dryer.

It goes backwards and forwards along this blue line,

and look - it's nearly ready to come out the other end.

After four hours in the drier, the pasta is ready.

It comes flying down this tube, which looks like a helter-skelter.

Look at that! That looks amazing!

RATTLING

Did you hear the rattling noise?

That's the sound of the dried pasta

zooming down the helter-skelter into the bags below.

It's going so quickly! I'd like to be a bit of pasta going down that.

It would be really fun!

The last stage is for the finished pasta to get packaged up

and sent to food companies all over the UK,

and that's a job for that robot.

Inside each of these bags are hundreds of dried pasta shapes

that look just like this.

Do yo know what this pasta shape is called?

It's called macaroni.

You might have even had macaroni and cheese for dinner.

I loved seeing how pasta was made. Did you?

Do you remember the name of the special machine

that pushes the pasta into shapes?

That's right - it's a die.

Did you hear the rattling sound of the dried pasta

as it went zooming down the slide?

And did you see the machine bouncing the pasta up and down?

It looked like wiggly worms.

So, the next time you have pasta for dinner,

you'll know just how it's made,

and when you have popcorn as a treat,

you'll know how and why popcorn pops!

See you next time.

# There are lots of things all around us

# Exciting things that surround us

# But how does it work? Do you know?

# How is it made? Do you know?

# Do you know? Let's find out! #