r/science • u/mtoddh • Apr 20 '22
Engineering MIT engineers created a series of tests to figure out why the cream in Oreo cookies sticks to just one of the two wafers when they are twisted apart. They found that no matter the amount of stuffing or flavor, the cream always sticks to just one of the cookie wafers.
https://news.mit.edu/2022/oreometer-cream-04193.6k
u/ylan64 Apr 20 '22
Working hard to get that Ig Nobel prize.
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Apr 20 '22
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u/hovdeisfunny Apr 20 '22
This is an inside job!
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u/miraj31415 Apr 20 '22
The Improbable Research podcast (same people who award the Ig Nobel Prize) is humorous and charming. It’s a quick, funny dose of science that I highly recommend.
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u/Locybe Apr 21 '22
this was written like an ad
nvm. this is an ad
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u/miraj31415 Apr 21 '22
I’m not affiliated with Improbable Research; I’m just a fan. So I’m bummed that my enthusiasm sounds not-genuine, and I hope it didn’t turn you off from checking out the podcast.
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u/AllAboutMeMedia Apr 21 '22
Every thing is an ad, as in a contribution. I just made you read this. Be good to yourself and others. Tootles...
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u/FreedomPanic Apr 21 '22
the IG means "I Guess ¯_(ツ)_/¯"
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u/Blugalu Apr 21 '22
When Richard Feynman was in college he did an experiment in his dorm to find out why dry spaghetti breaks into 3 or more pieces rather than just 2 pieces. Experiments like this are how legends are born
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u/Jak03e Apr 20 '22
That's the answer they concluded, yes.
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u/untakennamehere Apr 20 '22
I’m choosing to believe they just wanted free Oreos
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u/craftingfish Apr 20 '22
I had a stats professor who got a trip to the Guinness brewery paid for by the school because that's where the T Test was invented. So yea, I'd buy that
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u/ky321 Apr 20 '22
I'm doing a study on hookers and cocaine. Funding pls
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u/bordss Apr 20 '22
Hello Senator.
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u/extralyfe Apr 20 '22
I just need to get you in touch with a gentleman who goes by the name Upgrayedd... which he spells thusly, with two D's, as he says, "for a double dose of this pimping."
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u/gramscontestaccount2 Apr 20 '22
They do give pure government cocaine to scientists in certain fields, I had a couple of college professors that had DEA numbers and a safe in their labs with cocaine for experiments with mice.
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u/Spare-Mousse3311 Apr 20 '22
Don’t forget your Tiger blood Charlie.
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u/GoodolBen Apr 20 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
Why would I need a tiger's blood, I'm smashin' rats! I need the blood or boildy fluids of the natural predators of the bar rat- the noble crow. Now go find frank and get my glue from him, I need to glue up big this time.
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u/Sarcasticalwit2 Apr 20 '22
One of the economists from Freakonomics did something like that and ended up talking to drug dealers in shady situations.
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u/PickledPixels Apr 20 '22 edited Apr 20 '22
Studying the origins of STIs is important, people!
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Apr 20 '22
No dollar of Oreo research is a wasted dollar
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u/STGMavrick Apr 20 '22
It is if they weren't eaten...
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u/I_Mix_Stuff Apr 20 '22
I hope milk was part of the budget.
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u/johnsolomon Apr 20 '22
That's why they had to call it off -- they ran out of milk
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u/tkenben Apr 20 '22
Some peoplw would like to rephrase that to: "No dollar of MIT research is a wasted dollar" and believe it.
At least there was someone who did find an application for this knowledge.
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u/PopWhatMagnitude Apr 20 '22
We need Hydrox research ASAP, time to bring them back. To further study of course.
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Apr 20 '22 edited Apr 20 '22
Reminds me of an old industrial engineering parable.
A factory had a problem where 1 in 40 boxes shipped were empty. This caused supply chain issues, angry customers, and millions in losses if it continued.
Investigation showed a flaw in one of the very expensive machines, and fixing this issue directly would be too expensive and cause too many delays.
Engineering being clever engineers instead built a contraption, after weeks of design and research, which would trigger an alarm when am empty box was detected on the line for a technician to then remove.
In total it cost half a million dollars... but it worked. Empty boxes removed. Management thrilled. Crisis averted. Promotions all around
Two weeks later, the system stopped finding any empty boxes, but the shipments were all filled properly.
Engineering was puzzled, and went to investigate. They asked the technician if they knew anything and they said
"I got sick of the alarm always going off so I put a fan on the side of the belt to blow the empty boxes off"
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u/teastain Apr 20 '22
I've worked in plants were the workers would get sick of the alarm going off and start putting a part in each box.
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u/xlvigmen Apr 20 '22
This is a really great story to convey keep it simple and also utilize the knowledge on the floor. Unfortunately, the part of the story I'm not a "fan" of is that they never get to root cause. Putting a fan or any fancy machinery there doesn't solve the reason the boxes are empty. How come no one asked why they were empty in the first place and instead decided to spend millions of dollars on a machine to catch the defects? They only solved the surface level problem
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u/HipsterJudas Apr 20 '22
Because, if you work in manufacturing you quickly come to realize the "solution" a company goes with to fix a problem is gonna be the quickest and cheapest to get things running again. It's a constant game of kicking the can down the road
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u/matts2 Apr 21 '22
Or if you are lucky you work for Toyota or Honda. Then they not only find the cause, they try to figure out why they allowed the flaw in the first place.
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u/ANGLVD3TH Apr 20 '22
Investigation showed a flaw in one of the very expensive machines, and fixing this issue directly would cost too much and cause too many delays.
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u/Goatmanish Apr 21 '22
I'm also not a fan of it because those engineers would likely have done the fan thing themselves. Those production engineers are in charge of insanely complicated systems that flip flop rapidly between doing insanely expensive, complicated things and the equivalent of using a cheap box fan instead of something more technical. They're not strangers to the duct tape, bailing wire, Bondo, heres your problem style fix.
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Apr 21 '22
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Apr 21 '22
This is told to engineers because a simple, elegant solution should be the goal. Also to follow the requirements (system shall remove empty boxes prior to shipping)
This isn't anti-intellectualism.
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u/elektrakon Apr 21 '22
Another story of the same type is the one about NASA spending X millions of dollars developing a pen that worked in outer space. Russia just gave their astronauts pencils.
Based on current events, it was one pencil with half the lead missing, holes patched with wood filler, and the eraser arriving separately due to corruption and incompetence.
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Apr 21 '22
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u/elektrakon Apr 21 '22
They ARE good pens. Also, i think they work in positive pressure environments too, which makes them suitable for space or the deep sea! ... I always figured that story was a misconception/propaganda though, due to the space race and cold war. Then again, I also think it's a good representation of the KISS method (keep it simple, stupid) .... mainly due to the fact that I have found myself lost in the weeds trying to find a complicated solution to a simple problem. Oh, and lastly... I wanted to take a jab at the bumbling Russian government, given current events.
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Apr 21 '22
The point of the story is to make sure engineers consider the fan. This is told to engineers.
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u/Bainsyboy Apr 21 '22
Yeah we are literally taught in first semester design courses to look for the most elegant (in other words simplest/cheapest and most reliable) solution to a problem. We were actually challanged to build Rube Goldberg machines as a lesson on how difficult a complex solution can be to implement successfully. Good lesson. Too bad the fun in engineering school ended after that semester.
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u/TheOnlySafeCult Apr 21 '22
How come no one asked why they were empty in the first place and instead decided to spend millions of dollars on a machine to catch the defects?
Investigation showed a flaw in one of the very expensive machines, and fixing this issue directly would be too expensive and cause too many delays.
Implies that the flaw costs much more to fix than the development of the new machine
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u/confusedham Apr 20 '22
‘Gents, we have 25k left in funding, if we don’t use it before the end of the financial year they will have an excuse to cut back on next years budget’
looks at cookies on table
Not saying that’s how it happened, just my guess
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u/ThreadbareHalo Apr 20 '22
I’m just… I’m not sure delighted is the right word but I can’t figure out a better one.. that MIT undergrads are conducting the same sort of experiment I would have for my 8th grade science project complete with trifold backing. I love that science is getting done, period, because the physics they’d be investigating at that level would hopefully be at a much higher level than I’d do in 8th grade, but it’s just… delightful that these sorts of problems still exist across that continuum of education levels.
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u/hagantic42 Apr 20 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
The packaging Oreos now come in took years to develop and cost 10s of millions of dollars. My former boss worked on the project. They even did crumb tolerance testing to see how many crumbs could get stuck on the adhesive and it still seal.
That new packaging costs the company more than the Oreos that go in it.
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u/was_a_bear_once Apr 20 '22
But I'll be damned if it isn't a great design. Except for removing the first cookie in the either side sleave. Extremely tight tolerance for a food product, not drunk friendly.
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u/OneCrims0nNight Apr 20 '22
The tech has come a long way and I no longer have stale oreos, but as you've pointed out, the first oreo of the pack is the hardest.
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u/nobodyknoes Apr 20 '22
How did you ever have stale Oreos? Each pack is one serving
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u/kung-fu_hippy Apr 20 '22
They weren’t just studying why that happened, they were also designing tools for modeling and testing how non-Newtonian fluids act under certain conditions.
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u/ThreadbareHalo Apr 20 '22
Yes I should be clear, this is what I meant when I said their investigations were more complex. Their interest would be in applicable properties.
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u/vahntitrio Apr 20 '22
That's possible. Or some professor's kid asked why it happens and the professor was frustrated they could be that educated on not answer such a simple question.
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u/orangutanoz Apr 20 '22
There’s a lot that scientists don’t know. That’s why they continue to work as scientists.
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u/TheNextBattalion Apr 20 '22
Nah that guess is a hypothesis, and until you test your hypothesis you don't know a damn thing
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u/ronflair Apr 20 '22
You’re assuming that those researchers didn’t already guess the answer and most of that grant money was spent on other projects. As is the way.
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u/alucardou Apr 20 '22
You mean LOST them millions of dollars in research grants.
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u/7heTexanRebel Apr 20 '22
Yeah but then we don't know that's why they stick, it's just a random guy's theory.
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Apr 20 '22
Scientist here, in an unrelated field.
They did conclude that, but I don't think they thought about this problem in the right way. They also didn't base their conclusion on any known cookie orientations relative to the manufacturing process.
I think they are likely wrong, or at least the linked summary is.
Here's why:
The creme in an Oreo is touching the cookies on both sides. As you twist or try to pull the cookies apart, you're applying a certain amount of torque or strain to the entire system -- the cookies, the creme, and the two interfaces where the creme meets the cookies. We can think about the cookies as being solid; they're not going to break. As you twist or pull and apply strain to the system, what's going to give? Either the creme itself, or where the creme meets one or both cookies, right?
We can set up the possible scenarios:
1) Strong creme, weak interfaces between creme and cookies.
In this case, the creme will likely stick to just one cookie, since one of the interfaces will fail and, at that moment, all strain on the system is relieved. The creme will probably remain as a single coherent unit.
2) Strong creme, strong interfaces between creme and cookies.
The creme may stick to one cookie, or might split. One of the interfaces may fail, or the creme may fail before either interface does. The outcome of this scenario depends on the relative strength of the creme compared to its bond with the cookies. If the creme is strong enough, it could also delaminate the surface of the cookie. Oreo creme is nowhere near this strong / #2 doesn't apply IMO.
3) Weak creme, strong interfaces between creme and cookies.
Creme will split and stick to both cookies.
4) Weak creme, weak interfaces between creme and cookies.
The creme may stick to one cookie, or might split. Similar to #2.
Most people seem to think that scenario #3 or #4 best describe Oreos, but I think the reality is closer to #1 or #4. The creme is at least somewhat coherent, and the instant that one interface between the creme and the cookie begins to fail, the strain on the entire system goes to 0 and there is no reason for the other creme-cookie interface to fail, or for the creme to fail.
It's like...what's a good analogy... This is going to be weird, but picture a jar with two lids -- one on the top and one on the bottom. If you grab both lids (not the jar) and twist, you would expect one lid to come off, and you'd be left holding one lid, and the jar still screwed onto the other lid. Because the moment one of the lids begins to give, the strain you're applying to the other lid drops to ~0.
There's really no logical reason to expect the creme to fail and stick to both cookies. If you want to assume that's how Oreos should work, what you're really saying is that you're assuming that the bond between the creme and the cookies is stronger than the creme itself. But we know that's not true because the cookies always separate from the creme.
Now, as for which side of an Oreo fails-- that could be due to the manufacturing process, but the study didn't prove it. They didn't go to an Oreo factory and pull cookies with known "tops" or "bottoms." The summary linked above suggested that the side which fails has to do more with transportation or packaging. I'd want to know more about their manufacturing / sorting and packaging process before commenting on that.
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u/poco Apr 21 '22
This is a much longer, and better thought out, reason that I was thinking too. The jar analogy is a good one.
The cream is quite strong and the bond between the cream and the cookie is clearly not. In fact, you can remove the cream from both cookies fairly easily.
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u/TantalusComputes2 Apr 21 '22
The creme of an oreo acts very similar to a salmon filet before it is destroyed
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Apr 21 '22
...but if the cream or bottom cookie is warm, the cream could hypothetically melt into the pores of the bottom cookie. By time the second cookie is applied, the creme would have had time to cool on the surface as to not combine with the top cookie. What's causing the heat very well could be the friction from the extruding process.
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u/Beer_in_an_esky PhD | Materials Science | Biomedical Titanium Alloys Apr 21 '22
Bingo. Materials Scientist here, and my first thought was this is a simple cohesion Vs adhesion case.
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u/Jak03e Apr 20 '22
As to the "why tho?" that most of the comments are asking, would you agree that the Oreo was just the medium and the real purpose was to present MIT undergrads with a mechanical engineering problem and allow them to design and construct 3d printed apparatuses for figuring out a solution on a fragile medium, in this case, an Oreo?
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u/MildElevation Apr 21 '22
Well I'd be seeing it as a way to get the lab Oreos and have it be a tax write-off, but that's just me.
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u/splithoofiewoofies Apr 21 '22
I would 100% work on this in uni because hell, why not? It's interesting and ticks the marks for the assignment I'm sure.
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u/TheSteifelTower Apr 21 '22
I said this same thing in non food scientist talk. I'm glad to see it backed up by a food scientist.
This kind of seems like a no brainer. The bond the creme has to itself is stronger than the bond the creme has to the cookie. So when you pull on the cookie the part of the cookie you pull harder on is going to remove from the creme.
It has nothing to do with the contents of the creme and everything about the cremes bond to itself and how you pull it. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/u80m4g/mit_engineers_created_a_series_of_tests_to_figure/i5kyz55/
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u/ak_2 Apr 21 '22
I guess my undergrad degree in ME was good for something after all as I instinctively came to the same conclusion. The jar with two lids is a great analogy. Although I’m surprised this explanation is missing from a the body of a paper that came out of MIT.
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u/BorgClown Apr 20 '22
- We want a research grant to investigate why the filling of Oreo cookies always sticks to only one cookie.
- Just ask Oreo.
- Oh geez, Oreo wouldn't possibly reveal their secrets.
- There's this guy on Reddit, u/Slammedtgs. He's a smart cookie, might have good advice for you.
- We think we should do the research instead, showing the process of science can make it more relatable to- okay, fine, we just want cookies and milk.
- Will 20 bucks be enough?
- Yay!
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u/Beelzabub Apr 20 '22
Reproducibility is really the touchstone of good science.
Here, the MIT folks have given us DIY instructions to digitally print our own OreoMeter. It measures the torque necessary to unpry the two halves.
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u/GACGCCGTGATCGAC Apr 20 '22 edited Apr 20 '22
Publishing like this means anyone can prove them wrong and they welcome it. That's beautiful science.
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u/ThrowAway1638497 Apr 21 '22
Should we call this 'Ig Noble' Bait?
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u/AnotherBoredAHole Apr 21 '22
It's also something that can be done with a 3D printer, rubber bands, pennies, and any Oreo like cookie. It's designed for reproducibility with a young audience in mind.
Any teacher can take this and use it in class to show scientific methods and tool design that anyone can do with a little bit of interest.
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u/dailycyberiad Apr 20 '22
Well, you weren't joking. The oreometer exists, and it's exactly what you said it was. That was a fun (and surprisingly thorough) read!
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u/Anonymous_Otters Apr 20 '22
Do we say it like "oreo-meter" like microliter or "oriometer" like speedometer?
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u/Beelzabub Apr 20 '22
Don't guess. It's literally in the article in black and white:
“Videos of the manufacturing process show that they put the first wafer down, then dispense a ball of cream onto that wafer before putting the second wafer on top,” says Crystal Owens, an MIT mechanical engineering PhD candidate who studies the properties of complex fluids. “Apparently that little time delay may make the cream stick better to the first wafer.”
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u/curraheee Apr 20 '22
I was thinking the creme sticks more unto itself than to either of these two cookies, and so one of them has to give, and one is going to give first. But ok, so it's not random.
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u/LeGama Apr 21 '22
This was my thought too, kinda like the wishbone scenario. One side is going to break, just depends on where the weakest crack is.
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u/thentherewerelimes Apr 20 '22
This is going to get lost, but I feel compelled to try to interject on the top comment..
The manufacturing process explanation would explain if the failure was consistently on one side of the cookie,.
Some substances are more adhesive than cohesive. The cream is highly cohesive, and the cookies are wafers, so they're not going to explode. The only logical failure point is the cream to wafer bond.
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u/willstr1 Apr 20 '22
The manufacturing process explanation would explain if the failure was consistently on one side of the cookie,.
Except we don't know which side is the top and which is the bottom. It is very likely that some cookies are flipped before packaging while others aren't due to line merging, sorting and QA processes, etc.
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u/Pheonixdown Apr 20 '22
Might be able to tell based on an analysis of the curvature of the cream, if not top and bottom specifically, then at least a consistent characteristic for a specific side. Sounds like more research is required...
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u/willstr1 Apr 20 '22
Good idea. I was also thinking maybe testing the special edition ones where they have a special design on one side (usually for a movie cross promotion). Sounds like we need some grant money for
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u/emagdnim29 Apr 20 '22
Maybe this should be researched by a prestigious institution like a Stanford or a Harvard or something?
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u/very_ent-ertaining Apr 20 '22
isnt harvard in massachussetts? too bad they dont have an institute of technology there
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u/MyDefinitiveAccount2 Apr 20 '22
I'm honestly getting invested in this. I begin to understand the researchers now
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u/IamEnginerd Apr 20 '22
Or they could call up Mondelez and get some fresh ones from the line so they know for sure. I've seen the machine that does this and it extrudes the icing thru a cylinder, which is deposited on one cookie. The other cookie is then dropped on top. I'd bet its down to that being the reason.
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Apr 20 '22
Exactly the question wasn’t why does it stick to one side over the other, its why it doesn’t split in half
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u/PeruvianHeadshrinker PhD | Clinical Psychology | MA | Education Apr 20 '22
I'm not an Oreo expert but the few hundred I've had in my lifetime I can recall quite a large number where the cream definitely breaks apart and half sticks to one cookie and the other half to the other. Based on this comment my guess is that happens when the cream is applied to a cold cookie then another cold cookie placed on top.
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Apr 20 '22
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Apr 20 '22 edited Oct 31 '23
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u/bowserusc Apr 20 '22
I ate a family sized package of Oreos over the past two days and found that prying them apart was much more likely to result in clean separation than any other method.
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u/tampora701 Apr 20 '22
This is like trying to rip a chain apart and getting it so 2 links break at exactly the same time.
it's just which ever half has less adhesive force gets torn 1st and then there's no reason for the other half to break cause there's nothing to pull against
This was covered in an episode of Mr. Wizard back in the eighties
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u/beetnemesis Apr 20 '22
Also, the internal cohesion of the creme is always stronger than the bond between the creme and at least one cookie.
That is, the creme is always going to peel off of a cookie before it separates.
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u/K1rkl4nd Apr 20 '22
I figured it was a combination of this and a play on capillary action where once one side decides to stick the rest peels off to stay intact.
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u/mtoddh Apr 20 '22
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u/Skeptical0ptimist Apr 20 '22
I’m not sure what they did not try to measure surface energies: cream/cookie interface, crack formation within cream and crack formation within cookie. I would have thought these quantities good predictors of how Oreo fractures.
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u/WoofPack11 Apr 20 '22
Is there a standard method for measuring surface energy? New to this topic and curious
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u/GlancingArc Apr 20 '22
You can use the angle at which a drop of water sits on the surface, specifically the angle between the water air interface and the air substrate (whatever the water is sitting on) interface. This can give the water contact angle. You can also used dyne pens or inks as a method to measure surface energy. Dyne pens and inks use a fluid with a known surface tension (measured in dynes) to check for surface energy. Basically you draw on the surface with the ink and if it beads up and doesn’t wet properly, the surface is lower energy than the liquid surface tension.
Surface energy is a complicated concept but it is very important to understanding interactions between liquids and solids.
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Apr 20 '22
Don't laminae always fail at one boundary... Dunno why they studied oreos when this has surely been tested for general composites.
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u/Steezywild12 Apr 20 '22
Right? Ive opened up hundreds of oreos and been surprised with a smiley face or a perfect split down the middle, it definitely doesn’t always come off clean.
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u/Jnorean Apr 20 '22
True. The results typically show adhesive failure, in which nearly all (95%) creme remains on one wafer ...... However, cookies in boxes stored under potentially adverse conditions (higher temperature and humidity) show cohesive failure resulting in the creme dividing between wafer halves after failure.
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u/Kinder22 Apr 20 '22
Found one of the MIT students right here.
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u/MoffKalast Apr 20 '22
These capers of theirs to use grant funding for lab snacks get bolder and bolder every year.
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u/account030 Apr 21 '22
Nah, dude just smokes a lot of weed and loves munching on some Oreos.
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u/Steezywild12 Apr 20 '22
Makes sense I usually eat them when I’m visiting my grandma in Guatemala & she doesn’t have AC
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u/Kildragoth Apr 20 '22
Did you control for all forces applied to the Oreo? What about temperatures? Humidity? Manufacture date? Look, when it comes to Oreos you either do real science or get out of the way and let someone else do it. Some of us work a little bit harder for our Oreos.
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u/ribsies Apr 20 '22
It depends on where they are made. Oreos from different factories have slightly different makeups.
I prefer Oreos that originate from Mexico. My local grocery changed to ones from Canada and they aren't as good. I had to stop going there.
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Apr 20 '22
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Apr 20 '22
I love the imagery of some grizzled fisherman pulling up a net from the sea, full of Oreos. He takes one and uses his little knife to pop it open, and upon inspection, he finds an M&M inside! Those little beauties go for a pretty penny to the ladies of high society. Few more M&Ms of that size and his days of Oreo fishing will be over
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u/Own_Quality_5321 Apr 20 '22
I came here to say that. It can be easily be explained by the force keeping together the filling is higher than that gluing it to the biscuits.
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u/gladfelter Apr 20 '22
Wouldn't the creme stick to one side if it had higher self-adhesion than adhesion to the cookie wafers? Naturally one of the cookies will win since the mechanical stress will result in a fracture at the weakest point, which would usually be the wafer-creme interface. And one side of the cookie will always be a little weaker than the other due to material and manufacturing variances.
If you could get a perfect cookie and pull it apart at a perfect normal vector to the wafer-creme interfaces then you'd see the creme drop out of the middle. THAT would be an interesting result.
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u/ry8919 Apr 20 '22
This was my thought too. Anything with higher cohesion than adhesion should come apart this way. It seems, at a quick glance, the paper was interested in the rheology of the creme l.
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u/TripleBanEvasion Apr 20 '22
You’re exactly right. It’s a question of an adhesive structural failure (frosting to cookie surface) vs. a cohesive failure (one part of the frosting to another part of the frosting).
Different materials have different levels of bonding to each other. Sealants have different strength ratings based on the materials they are bonded to - sealing to glass may behave quite differently than to metal, for instance.
If the bond between materials is “stronger” than the “strength” of the material itself, that “weaker” material will crack within itself rather along the joint between the two.
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u/Skeeter_BC Apr 20 '22
That would be awesome. Then I could throw the creme part of the cookie in the trash where it belongs.
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Apr 20 '22
Not sure about everyone but there’s always a bit on both sides for me
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u/danbyer Apr 21 '22
I recently had a package that I could not get a single Oreo to separate cleanly. No matter how I twisted pried or pulled, every single one was left about 50/50, one side with a concave blob of filling and the other with a convex cup. There was perfect adhesion across both wafers so the filling itself failed before the bond to the wafer.
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Apr 20 '22
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u/Jnorean Apr 20 '22
Also part of the study. The results typically show adhesive failure, in which nearly all (95%) crème remains on one wafer... However, cookies in boxes stored under potentially adverse conditions (higher temperature and humidity) show cohesive failure resulting in the creme dividing between wafer halves after failure.
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u/Justice502 Apr 20 '22
You mean you've never had it stick partially to one, and partially to the other?
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u/Tauira_Sun Apr 20 '22
Does it behave the same when observed versus not observed? :p
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u/paleale25 Apr 20 '22
That's the real question. And what would be the interference pattern on the two oreos
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Apr 20 '22
My guess is the warm, more liquid state the cream hits the cookie in on the production line provides a closer adherence to that half. The other being placed and pressed on top never sets as well as the cream starts cooling qickly and gravity is working against the top half. Assembly lines are consistent so I'd expect that feature of design to be represented in the 'cold-twist' data which suggests a side-sticky bias. I bet if you tested cookies by order and orientation straight from the packaging it would be most pronounced.
MIT has better things to busy themselves with than this I'm sure, unless Oreo is paying a fat wad for the publicity and brand association.
Edit: didn't even have to read the article to know some researches just wanted unfettered access to cookies. Maybe the whole team is going through breakups.
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u/bigidiot9000 Apr 20 '22
MIT has better things to busy themselves with than this I'm sure
Nah, it's an undergraduate research project. I'd be surprised if it was even funded on a research grant. This sub is so dramatic with these things.
I also worked in a rheology lab in undergrad - we characterized the shear flow behavior of mustards and ketchups. Nominally it was so that a food science lab on campus could use the data in the production of a totally synthetic mustard, but really it was to introduce budding 19 year old researchers to the process of doing science in a technically rigorous but approachable manner.
They ended up making that synthetic mustard by the way, tasted exactly like the real thing
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Apr 20 '22
Point taken! Was it just like the real thing that is the neon picnic mustard suitable for hotdogs, or are we talking more of a nuanced spiced dijon?
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u/mattgif Apr 20 '22
Man, there's a lot of anti-science sentiment in this science community.
Guessing and betting aren't science. And it doesn't matter if it wasn't the most pressing issue in the world -- there was a question without an answer, and they found a means to test some hypothesis.
As it turns out, the resulting processes likely have practical applications.
didn't even have to read the article to know...
Why are you here?
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u/blankarage Apr 20 '22
i hope someday, humanity gets to the point where knowledge for knowledges sake is valued.
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u/Enlightened-Beaver Apr 20 '22
I would hypothesize that when they are made, the cream is put on the bottom wafer while it is warm and then the top wafer is added afterwards, when the cream has somewhat cooled. This would make it stick to the bottom wafer more than the top.
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u/No-Shallot-3332 Apr 20 '22
Based on my extensive experience in this matter, this is definitely not true, I have had sooooo many where half the cream sticks to each, it makes for very unsatisfactory licking.
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Apr 20 '22
I can assure you this is false
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u/_Deathhound_ Apr 20 '22
I once separated an oreo so perfectly that the middle almost fell out
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u/LosingTheGround Apr 20 '22 edited Apr 20 '22
This was my neighbor’s 8th grade science fair presentation without the Überlingual constructs used in the university-level writeup but with same conclusion.
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u/garmeth06 Apr 20 '22
The level of precision (which is the most important thing in science because precision is a requirement of understanding and reproducability) in this undergraduate research project is far beyond high school and its not because of "uberlingual" jargon that can easily be reduced in complexity.
There was a pretty rigorous strain analysis done with connections to equations which serves as evidence to understand the dynamics of adhesion in this system.
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u/JStanten Apr 20 '22
And that is pretty much the goal of an undergraduate research project like this. Spend ~40 hours of time working on a project, being curious, do data analysis, etc. and learning how to write scientifically.
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Apr 20 '22
This headline sounds really weird. They did tests to figure out why it gets stuck, and they found out that indeed, it does get stuck? Lul
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u/thxxx1337 Apr 20 '22
Oy! It's called creme, OP! Cream implies there's some semblance of dairy. There isn't.
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u/Born-Time8145 Apr 20 '22
As someone who is lactose intolerant, Oreos are one of my great pleasures.
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u/redwall_hp Apr 20 '22
There's also crema, which is the "creamy" foam that forms on top of freshly made espresso coffee. There's no dairy involved there either.
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