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The Wisconsin Laser Cheese Slicer
From Chuck Simmins, who tends to find this sort of thing...
A researcher from the University of Wisconsin at Madison has figured out a better way to slice cheese; just use a laser. "At any other university, people would have just laughed. But this is Wisconsin. It's cheese. And this is no laughing matter," said Xiaochun Li, a mechanical engineering professor and laser expert... Li, working with engineering graduate student Hongseok Choi, has adapted the same kind of laser used for eye surgery to slice Wisconsin's most famed food product. At first, Li tried using a traditional commercial laser that uses heat to cut by melting or evaporating; it fried the cheese. "It smelled really bad," he said.
"Eeewww! Who cut the cheese?"
Li tried again using a new class of laser that emits light in ultraviolet, and therefore shorter, wavelengths. That laser, known as a cold laser, cuts by blasting apart the molecular bonds that hold materials together.
And when you get done cutting the cheese, you might try the simple liquid oxygen shortcut recommended by the Evelyn Wood School of Speed Barbecue...

Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2004-01-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=24291