The game of twisting an Oreo and seeing which wafer the cream is on has been used to make decisions, random predictions and resolve disagreements for decades. Now, a group of graduate students from Princeton claim to have cracked the code for which cookie the cream will end up on so that you can be a dirty cheater.
John Cannarella, Dan Quinn and Joshua Spechler were studying together at Princeton’s mechanical and aerospace engineering program in 2014, when they decided to solve the mystery of the Oreo twist. Quinn, who is currently a postdoc at Stanford University, tells Quartz, “The Oreo was our generation’s wishbone.”
At first, they assumed that someone must have already taken on the problem but cursory research turned up nothing. Spechler, currently a hardware engineer at Apple, says he assumed it was probably a bit of a coin flip: “Intuition would say there’s no advantage.”
Cannarella, now a mechanical engineering consultant at DuPont, compares the material systems to shatterproof glass and batteries: “It’s interesting from an engineering standpoint since the cookie is similar to many modern composites: a strong brittle layer (the wafer) for strength coupled with a weaker ductile layer (the cream) for toughness.”
YouTube/nathanolson: A classic Oreo ad from the 90’s – you’re going to marry: Emily Fletcher EW – oh yeah you’re going to marry: Laura Fisher
