MIT engineers introduce the Oreometer | MIT News

When you twist open an Oreo cookie to get to the creamy heart, you’re mimicking a common test in rheology — the research of how a non-Newtonian substance flows when twisted, pressed, or in any other case pressured. MIT engineers have now subjected the sandwich cookie to arduous products assessments to get to the middle of a tantalizing question: Why does the cookie’s cream adhere to just 1 wafer when twisted aside?

“There’s the intriguing issue of seeking to get the cream to distribute evenly amongst the two wafers, which turns out to be truly hard,” claims Max Enthusiast, an undergraduate in MIT’s Office of Mechanical Engineering.

In pursuit of an answer, the staff subjected cookies to conventional rheology checks in the lab and found that no subject the flavor or sum of stuffing, the product at the center of an Oreo practically constantly sticks to one particular wafer when twisted open up. Only for more mature packing containers of cookies does the product occasionally different a lot more evenly in between the two wafers.

The scientists also measured the torque necessary to twist open an Oreo, and observed it to be related to the torque required to flip a doorknob and about 1/10th what’s essential to twist open up a bottlecap. The cream’s failure strain — i.e. the pressure for each location required to get the product to movement, or deform — is 2 times that of cream cheese and peanut butter, and about the exact same magnitude as mozzarella cheese. Judging from the cream’s response to pressure, the crew classifies its texture as “mushy,” fairly than brittle, difficult, or rubbery.

So, why does the cookie’s product glom to a single aspect rather than splitting evenly in between both of those? The manufacturing approach may possibly be to blame.

“Videos of the production method present that they set the initially wafer down, then dispense a ball of product onto that wafer before placing the next wafer on top,” suggests Crystal Owens, an MIT mechanical engineering PhD prospect who scientific studies the properties of sophisticated fluids. “Apparently that very little time delay might make the cream stick much better to the initial wafer.”

The team’s study isn’t merely a sweet diversion from bread-and-butter analysis it is also an opportunity to make the science of rheology available to other folks. To that close, the researchers have made a 3D-printable “Oreometer” — a straightforward device that firmly grasps an Oreo cookie and uses pennies and rubber bands to management the twisting pressure that progressively twists the cookie open up. Instructions for the tabletop device can be located here.

The new review, “On Oreology, the fracture and move of ‘milk’s preferred cookie,’” seems now in Kitchen Flows, a specific issue of the journal Physics of Fluids. It was conceived of early in the Covid-19 pandemic, when a lot of scientists’ labs ended up shut or difficult to access. In addition to Owens and Lover, co-authors are mechanical engineering professors Gareth McKinley and A. John Hart.

Confection connection

A standard examination in rheology places a fluid, slurry, or other flowable materials onto the base of an instrument known as a rheometer. A parallel plate previously mentioned the foundation can be lowered on to the exam substance. The plate is then twisted as sensors observe the used rotation and torque.

Owens, who often works by using a laboratory rheometer to take a look at fluid materials these kinds of as 3D-printable inks, could not assist noting a similarity with sandwich cookies. As she writes in the new review:

“Scientifically, sandwich cookies present a paradigmatic model of parallel plate rheometry in which a fluid sample, the cream, is held amongst two parallel plates, the wafers. When the wafers are counter-rotated, the cream deforms, flows, and in the long run fractures, foremost to separation of the cookie into two pieces.”

Although Oreo product may not seem to possess fluid-like homes, it is deemed a “yield tension fluid” — a gentle sound when unperturbed that can get started to move beneath plenty of tension, the way toothpaste, frosting, sure cosmetics, and concrete do.

Curious as to irrespective of whether some others experienced explored the link in between Oreos and rheology, Owens observed point out of a 2016 Princeton College review in which physicists 1st documented that indeed, when twisting Oreos by hand, the product practically often arrived off on one wafer.

“We preferred to develop on this to see what basically brings about this influence and if we could command it if we mounted the Oreos cautiously onto our rheometer,” she suggests.

Cookie twist

In an experiment that they would repeat for a number of cookies of various fillings and flavors, the scientists glued an Oreo to the two the leading and bottom plates of a rheometer and used different levels of torque and angular rotation, noting the values  that successfully twisted every single cookie apart. They plugged the measurements into equations to compute the cream’s viscoelasticity, or flowability. For each and every experiment, they also noted the cream’s “post-mortem distribution,” or wherever the cream finished up immediately after twisting open.

In all, the team went by means of about 20 containers of Oreos, which includes standard, Double Stuf, and Mega Stuf stages of filling, and standard, darkish chocolate, and “golden” wafer flavors. Astonishingly, they uncovered that no matter the volume of product filling or flavor, the cream virtually often divided on to a single wafer.

“We experienced expected an impact primarily based on dimensions,” Owens suggests. “If there was additional cream between levels, it really should be a lot easier to deform. But that is not in fact the situation.”

Curiously, when they mapped every single cookie’s result to its authentic position in the box, they discovered the cream tended to stick to the inward-dealing with wafer: Cookies on the still left side of the box twisted this kind of that the product finished up on the appropriate wafer, while cookies on the proper side divided with cream mostly on the remaining wafer. They suspect this box distribution might be a result of article-manufacturing environmental consequences, such as heating or jostling that may well cause product to peel a little absent from the outer wafers, even just before twisting.

The being familiar with received from the properties of Oreo product could probably be used to the design and style of other intricate fluid elements.

“My 3D printing fluids are in the identical class of products as Oreo product,” she suggests. “So, this new knowledge can support me far better design and style ink when I’m striving to print adaptable electronics from a slurry of carbon nanotubes, due to the fact they deform in practically particularly the same way.”

As for the cookie itself, she indicates that if the inside of of Oreo wafers have been much more textured, the cream may possibly grip far better on to each sides and split far more evenly when twisted.

“As they are now, we identified there’s no trick to twisting that would split the product evenly,” Owens concludes.

This research was supported, in element, by the MIT UROP program and by the National Protection Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship System.