Okay guys so I did an experiment before because I was really struggling to understand the optimal angle for pouring milk into my cereal bowl, dependent on the size and shape of the bowl and milk carton, as well as the type of cereal being eaten.
I've tested this with Corn Flakes, where I selected a pool of 37 people from the population at random with no preference for gender or physical characteristics. A variety of bowls were tested with the Corn Flakes and the 37 participants poured milk from standard 1 Litre cartons, 2 Litre plastic bottles as well as 1 Litre TetraPak cartons (frequently used to store longlife UHT or Soy varieties of milk).
From this experiment I have deduced that Corn Flakes are best eaten from a wide, shallow bowl and benefit from what I will term the, 'close pour' and 'bowl fill' procedures. For this procedure, you want to actually rest the spout of the milk carton/bottle and pour the milk directly onto the bowl and actually avoid pouring the milk over the cereal.
This is because the flakes are often positioned in a manner that is convex relative to the direction of milk pouring. Due to this, the milk can have a tendency to quickly pool in a particular Corn Flake and then shoot back out, creating a literal geyser of cold, delicious milk that will cover anything in a 20cm radius in milk. Obviously, this is not the optimal way to pour milk into your Corn Flakes.
However by using the 'close pour' and 'bowl fill' procedures of milk pouring, we pour the milk into the bowl and from a low position - the milk therefore gains less momentum while pouring while also being directed to an area where the chances of a convex flake creating a milk geyser are minimized. By using a shallow and wide bowl, if a geyser is inadvertently created during the pour, the mess created is minimized as the wider surface area of the bowl will contain most of the spillage.
Also as a purely subjective benefit, I think Corn Flakes possess optimal taste when slightly crunchy and not 'covered' by the milk. The close-pour-bowl-fill position is therefore optimal in this way as well.
I will be updating this thread regularly with more details of the experiments I conduct throughout my daily life, wherein I ascertain the most optimal way to do the most trivial of things. But for now, at least I've taught you guys the most empirically correct way to pour milk into a bowl of Corn Flakes, so you can avoid that awful problem of Convex Corn Flake Milk Geysers.
Science: solving the problems no other methodology can solve.
