Pasta is displayed at the Alimentaria trade show in Barcelona March 25, 2010. Food and drink manufacturers and distributors from around the world are showcasing their products at Alimentaria until March 26.
Pasta is displayed at the Alimentaria trade show in Barcelona March 25, 2010. Reuters/Albert Gea
Pasta is displayed at the Alimentaria trade show in Barcelona March 25, 2010. Food and drink manufacturers and distributors from around the world are showcasing their products at Alimentaria until March 26. REUTERS/Albert Gea (SPAIN - Tags: FOOD BUSINESS)

Scientists have an unflattering image of nerd-looking older men who probably look like Albert Einstein and eternally garbed in white lab gown. However, an Italian physicist is getting the attention in social media because of his physical looks that could pass for a male model.

If in the past few months two handsome felons got their 15 minutes of fame after their mug shots became viral in social media sites, polymer physicist Davide Michieletto could give those guys a run for their money because of his combination of good looks and lots of brain.

Here's a sample of how the handsome physicist explains polymers using different types of pasta as an analogy for molecular characteristics.

YouTube/Physics World

Michieletto is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick. He and another Warwick physicist, Matthew Turner, invented a new shape of pasta, the anelloni, which is the black pasta seen in the video.

The new pasta shape, which is the Italian word for "ring," was made to help explain the complex shape of polymers which are like rings, but admittedly, their concept is difficult to understand for the average mind.

The way the three types of pastas used are tangled up and cooked and the difficulty in extracting them imitates how the ring-shaped polymers "become massively intertwined with each other."

For those who are scientifically inclined, more explanation about the pasta is coming out in the December issue of Physics World.