The method one uses to consume Oreos has been a hot debate for about as long as the cookie has been in existence. Are you a creme-first type of person, do you bite the cookie as a whole, or are you like my friend who will put a whole sleeve in a bowl of milk and eat it like cereal?
It's safe to say the most common method would be the twist-apart. For those twisting enthusiasts, a team of scientists have built the perfect Oreo separation device just for you.
It's called the Oreometer, and was developed by a team of mechanical engineers at MIT.
The product was an exercise in rheology, or the study of how matter flows, with the team calling this specific method Oreology.
The cookie's creme, of course. Oreo creme is considered a 'yield stress fluid', which means it will change shape when enough pressure is applied.
The Oreometer was built to test how different types of Oreos separate, with most of the attention being on the creme distribution across the two cookies.
Two plates to hold the two cookie pieces, a base to hold the plates and secure them together, then two attachments to the outermost edges of the plates. One attachment is then filled with pennies to act as a counterweight, eventually twisting that plate and thus the cookie it was holding.
Take it all apart, and you have a perfectly separated Oreo.
Crystal Owens, a mechanical engineer at MIT and lead author of the paper published regarding this experiment talked to Gizmodo about it. "Our favorite twist was rotating while pulling Oreos apart from one side, as a kind of peel-and-twist, which was the most reliable for getting a very clean break."
The team discovered that the creme would most often stay on one side of the Oreo, a trait that likely has to do with how they were manufactured. They also determined there was no correlation between the amount of creme and how cleanly the cookie separated, as seen when they tested other Oreo varieties such as the Double Stuf and Mega Stuf.
If you're curious, the Oreometer design is open source, so you can conduct your own Oreo experiments to your hearts' desire!
h/t: Gizmodo
