For the turkey scientist in you

If your office is like ours, the dominating water cooler conversation of the week has something to do with turkey: Topics might range from adventures in turkey frying to secret tips for achieving that universal Thanksgiving aspiration--a moist turkey from leg to breast.

For some, this goal transcends simply cookery. It's about biology, thermodynamics, and of course, mathematics. The following are some handy links for those extreme turkey scientists:

•  An About.com post recommends putting ice packs on the breast sections for about 30 minutes before cooking to keep them cooler than the rest of the bird.

•  Exploratorium.com's Science of Cooking explains how doubling the weight of a turkey changes key measurements like the volume by a factor of 2.0, the surface area by a factor of 1.59 and the distance to the center of the turkey by a factor of 1.26.

•  And the University of Minnesota's Food Safety and Education Research Department put out a release to warn against some of those less tradtional turkey cooking methods like the brown paper bag method; the trash bag marinade method; the slow-cooking overnight method and the "turkducken" method, in which a partially boned turkey is layered with a boned duck, then with a boned chicken and spread with layers of stuffing between each bird.