Twist an Oreo cookie and it splits apart into two wafers: one side with creme, and the other with little or none at all. Crystal Owens, an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wondered if it was possible to pull apart an Oreo so that each wafer had an equal amount of creme. To answer this question, Owens and her colleagues created a cookieseparating device, which they named the “Oreometer.”
The machine applies torque, or a twisting force, to Oreos to split them apart. Owens’s team tested different flavors, amounts of filling, and rotation speeds. It proved extremely difficult to split the creme filling perfectly in half. Instead, it almost always stuck to one side or broke into a half-moon shape. Owens believes that the cohesion—the force that holds molecules of the same substance together—of the creme is too strong to achieve an even split.
Owens hopes this experiment will inspire people to get curious about their desserts. “There’s a lot of science in the kitchen,” she says.