Food for a nation – what’s in my “Atta”

Nov 07, 2015 • 11:13 PM UTC

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Microorganisms

Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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I have lots of memories of taking wheat grains to the “atta mill” – called Chakka. It used to be a tough job – I was small (only 10 maybe) and me and my brother would manage a bag of grains on a pedal bike and take it to the mill. We would wait for the wheat to be processed (into fine flour). The smell/aromaof the place. A belt used to run many mills; and a single person would manage the mills. To give you a view of what it would look like; here is an image I borrowed from the web.

So, now you can imagine my surprise – when the first time; I saw a packet of atta you can just buy at a grocery store. These are simple things in life; which you look and say – oh – that makes sense.

Now, 20 years later; I was working late night looking for small particles I could use for flow visualization in foldscope – specially something everyone has access to and I explored if flour would do the trick. This is my first look at “starch granules” in flour. They are beautiful.
This is what the world feeds on.. Tiny little granules of starch.

I find it ironic that although I had enjoyed a million items made out of flour; j had never before seen starch granules. It’s even more ironic; that today morning I decided to come and sit in a bakery and write this post..