This is scientific American's 60 second science.

I'm Christopher and Tagyatta.

Chocolate may appear to have little in common with crude oil,

but production for consumers requires that both substances travel through pipes.

And the thicker, that is, the more viscous they are, the more likely they'll clog up those pipes.

So physicists at Temple University in Philadelphia have devised an unusual solution to avoid that sticky situation,

apply an electric field.

The process relies on a concept called Electro-Reology, in which a fluid can morph from a liquid to a jello-like consistency, or the other way around, under an electric field.

The field causes particles in the fluid, like paraffin and asphalt particles in crude oil,

or the cocoa and milk solids and chocolate, to act like tiny bar magnets and line up into chains.

The team's latest finding could be a boon for the production of low-fat chocolate, because cutting

the fat content of chocolate tends to jam up the pipes, what you might call the Augustus gloop effect.

Call a plumber.

Stuck in the back there, isn't he, won't goo-aure?

His his stomach has done that.

He's blocking all the chocolate.

But that blockage can be cleared by applying an electric field of 1,600 volts per centimeter, parallel to the chocolate's flow.

The effect would allow chocolatiers to cut cocoa butter by 10 to 20 percent and still not clogged the pipes.

The study appears in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors claim the resulting chocolate has a stronger cocoa flavor and taste, quote, wonderful.

And since the study was funded in part by the Mars Chocolate Company and other chocolate makers are interested, the researchers say the tech may be

commercialized within a year, at which point you can judge for yourself whether electric fields

...