From Chem. Commun., 2013, ASAP (DOI: 10.1039/C3CC38271K)
Seriously. From the abstract:
"Self-supporting superconducting replicas of pasta shapes are reported, yielding products of differing 3D architectures. Functioning high-temperature superconductor wires are developed and refined from replicas of spaghetti, demonstrating a unique sol–gel processing technique for the design and synthesis of novel macroscopic morphologies of complex functional materials."
Huh? And it gets better in the 'General Experimental' section:
"Spaghetti (own-brand durum wheat dried pasta) was purchased from The Co-operative Food (Co-operative Group Limited, UK), penne and fusilli (own-brand durum wheat dried pasta) were purchased from Sainsbury’s (J. Sainsbury’s plc, UK) and HonigTM Samen “Piraten Pasta” was a gift from Jamie Shenston (University of Bristol, UK) and Caroline Walker (Heinz)... Unless stated otherwise, all materials were used as received, and with no further purification."
The pasta is then soaked in a delicious blend of yttrium, barium, copper and silver (until green), oven baked at 920 ºC (gas mark 36, if you're trying this in your oven at home), sintered and annealed to taste then served in liquid helium. Yum!
Thanks to occasional commenter Martyn for pointing this out!
