The Meselson-Stahl experiments were groundbreaking studies in molecular biology. Some of the clarity of the centrifugation results was due to the that the DNA was fragmented during handling (although the experimenters did not know it at the time). As quoted in Davis, Stahl said that pipetting DNA was like “throwing spaghetti over Niagara Falls.” When DNA breaks into fragments, the sugar phosphate backbone is broken, forming many short double helixes. Why did the fragmented DNA still show the same pattern of nitrogen density banding?