Oncle Sam makes popcorn slowly but awesomely

You've probably never asked yourself what the process of making popcorn involves - unless a certain spoof mobile signal popcorn video caught your imagination - but that's the idea behind a certain student project.

Art and Design students from Swiss university ECAL decided to showcase the whole process of grains growing up to become popcorn in painstaking detail with a contraption dubbed Oncle Sam. This 'low-tech' device uses a single tealight candle to heat one lonely piece of grain in oil while adding salt for flavouring. Once the grain has popped, you can wind a handle to deliver the popcorn to you.

Yes, using a microwave would save you days of painstaking effort just to make enough popcorn for one sizable bowl, but you've gotta admit old Oncle Sam sure makes that classic cinema snack in the most mesmerising fashion – it looks something Wallace and Gromit might cook up. And it's just as practical.

[ECAL via DesignBoom]

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