Building gingerbread houses can be a frustrating process. An idyllic three-story building with crystal sugar snow, marshmallow snowmen, and gumdrop twinkle lights can quickly end in a collapsed mess, sending icing windows and candy cane gates into disarray. But don’t resort to those trusty milk cartons and graham crackers just yet – with a few changes in technique, your dream house can easily be obtained.
UCLA students built gingerbread houses at a recent Science & Food event During our recent “Engineering the Perfect Gingerbread House” event, graduate student Kendra Nyberg taught UCLA students about the best practices for gingerbread construction. Her lecture delved into the molecular makeup of the materials and the physics behind the structure. Base Construction Materials: Gingerbread and Icing Gingerbread should be sturdy and demonstrate elasticity, which is the measure of its ability to resist deformation [1]. Because the gingerbread walls will be under stress from the ...
