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Cereal is cooked at a high temperature, and this creates extremely strong bonds which hold the rice’s starch molecules together. These strong bonds make the rice act like glass.

During the cooking process, each piece of rice expands, causing a network of air-filled caves and tunnels to form within.

When milk is poured into your breakfast bowl, the cereal absorbs the milk. The milk flows into the crispy kernel, putting pressure on the air inside and pushes it around. The air knocks against each pocket’s walls until they shatter, causing a snap, or a crackle, or, sometimes a pop. Tiny air bubbles trapped inside the kernels also escape to the surface.

Source: (2006, April 24). Why Rice Krispies go Snap, Crackle, Pop! Retrieved February 10, 2009, from Live Science website: http://www.livescience.com/environment
060424_MM_rice_krispies.html

Does cereal tickle your taste buds? You may be interested in these books:

From corn to cereal by Roberta Basel
Mankato, MI : Capstone Press, c2006
Call No.: J P 664 BAS

The life of W.K. Kellogg by Tiffany Peterson
Publisher: Oxford : Heinemann Library, 2003.
Call No.: J P 338.7 PET

Eureka! Great inventions and how they happened by Richard Platt
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : Kingfisher, c2003.
Call No.: J 608 PLA

Glorious grasses : the grains by Meredith Sayles Hughes
Publisher: Minneapolis : Lerner Publicatons Co., c1999.
Call No.: J 641.3 HUG

For the availability of the above book titles, please check the library catalogue.

Originally answered by Hussain Bachek
Librarian
Children’s Services

Posted by Galvin Soh
Librarian
Children’s Services

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