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A group of scientists from MIT, whose study was just published in the journal “American Institute of Physics,” have designed a way to perfectly split an Oreo in two. They have come up with what they call an Oreometer, which splits the cookie with a specific amount of force in order to get one clean cookie and one with all the filling.
Study author Crystal Owens came up with the idea after using a rheometer, which measures liquid and substances’ responses to force. "One day, just doing experiments, and, all of a sudden we realized that this machine would be perfect for opening Oreos because it already has … the fluid in the center, and then these two discs are like the same geometry as an Oreo," she tells ‘USA Today.”
According to scientists, in order for the split to occur, the cookie needs to be from a freshly opened pack, and one must use a twisting motion. They note that the real key is the “adhesiveness” of the filling, which may change depending on how the cookies are stored, packaged, manufactured of shipped. Unfortunately, their experiments were unable to figure out how to split the cookie so each side had equal amounts of cream.
Source: USA Today
Research dollars could have gone to more important causes but at least this mystery is solved! How do you eat an Oreo? Are you a cookie splitter or do you just dunk the whole thing?