Cutting onions can be an experience in tears
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If you find yourself crying when you cut the onions, physicists have found a possible solution – but professional leaders will probably not like it.
When the onions are open, they spray a mixture of compounds rich in sulfide in the air, one of which is the syn-oxide syn-propanethal, a chemical that triggers the nerves in the eye responsible for the production of tears.
Sunghwan Jung at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleagues used a high -speed camera to analyze the spray produced in detail when …
