Science already explains how you should turn or twist your Oreo cookie so that the cream is better distributed.
Sometimes having breakfast can be an art, especially when it comes to dipping the cookies in milk, but when we talk about the typical Oreo, you even have to put mathematical formulas on the table.
Surely you remember the catchphrase “twist, lick and dip”, which comes from an ad for Airinga good strategy to enjoy breakfast and snacks, but that always tends to leave a part of the cookie without the delicious cream.
So scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have investigated how best to separate Oreo cookies to ensure that the filling is divided more evenly.
To do this, they designed their own formula called “oreometer” where the wafers of an Oreo were twisted in opposite directions at different speeds, until the cookies broke in half, being able to see with the naked eye how much cream was left on each wafer.
They relied on the laboratory instrument that measures how fluids deform under torsion forces, sandwiching them between two rotating surfaces.
This study, published in Physics of Fluids, took into account more than 1000 Oreo cookies of different flavors, and found that most of the filling would stick to one side about 80% of the time.
“I had in mind that if you twist Oreos perfectly, you should divide the cream perfectly down the middle.“, it states Crystal OwensPhD student in mechanical engineering, at Wall Street Journal. “But what actually happens is that the cream almost always runs out of one side.”.
He clarifies that the speed of the spin doesn’t matter in this regard either, since the slowest option took five minutes to separate the cookie and most of the cream ends up in a wafer. Then when it started up at full speed the filler separated from both sides.
“There was no combination of anything we could do by hand or on the rheometer that would change anything in our results.”, they comment.
They then discovered that dipping the cookie in milk before twisting made matters worse, as pieces would fall apart after just a minute of force.
study conclusions
Among some of the conclusions they drew, they point out that the minimum force required to split an oreo by turning it is the same as that required to turn a doorknob, approximately.
In the end, the researchers found that in most cases, the cream adhered to the wafer that was facing the inside of the box it came in, rather than the nearest edge of the box.
He comments that these factors can cause the filling to come off slightly from the wafer to which it is less adherent.
“Videos of the manufacturing process show them placing the first wafer, then dispensing a ball of cream onto that wafer before placing the second wafer on top. Apparently that little delay can make the cream stick better to the first wafer”, they explain.
“If the manufacturers of cookies would like to influence the distribution of the cream themselves, providing wafers with through holes or texture on the inner surfaces should promote adhesion of the cream to the wafer on both halves”, they point out.
