Those of us with unruly, curly manes are constantly searching for ways to tame them. For those who choose to straighten their hair using heat (applied with gadgets like flatirons), getting the desired look without singeing the hair into an amorphous mass is difficult, and the various products that claim to protect hair are a font of misinformation. One curly-haired engineer from Purdue University and her team have taken on the problem; the researchers are presenting their first paper on the heat capacity for different types of hair today at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' International Design Engineering Technical Conference.

Put simply, hairs are curly or not because of their chemical structure, influenced by genes and the distribution of the protein keratin. To make a curly hair straight, you apply heat to break the chemical bonds. Apply too much, either through an iron that's too hot or styling it too often, and the bonds can be permanently broken, leading to fried hair that can't regain its natural shape. Lots of products claim to protect hair from this frying, but the formulas are highly variable and ineffective.