Tuesday, June 7, 2016

As The Cookie Crumbles

By Stan G. Kain
October 2, 2003

How often have you bought a box of cookies, taken them home, opened them and had nothing but a box of crumbs?  Most of us have some unkind words for the truck driver who hauled the cookies.  Perhaps we have similar thoughts about the shelf stockers at the grocery store.  Maybe we've been blaming the wrong people for our broken cookies.

Broken cookies aren't just a perplexing issue for everyday cookie eaters.  It's an international problem.  Now, researchers at the University of Loughborough in Leichestershire, England, think they've found the cause of the mysterious crumbling cookies.  British physicists say it's a science problem; not handling that causes the shattered snacks.

So serious are the physicists, they employed an optical technique called, "digital speckle pattern interferometry."  While the research method takes longer to say than one needs to eat a broken cookie, the mystery appears to be solved.  Just as the shifting of the continental plates cause fault lines and earthquakes, cookies suffer from the same fault line syndrome.

Once the cookies are removed from the oven to cool, they pick up moisture around the rim, causing them to expand.  At the same time, moisture at the center of the cooking makes them contract.  The difference results in a build-up of strain forces, causing a crumbled cookie.  I wonder what the crumbling cookie measures on the Richter scale?

Scientists say their research will help cooking manufacturers adjust the humidity or temperature of their product in such a way the cookies won't crumble due to normal handling.  Next time you open a neatly arranged package of unbroken cookies, don't forget to thank the Loughborough scientists.  Who knows what may be next?  Can we even hope for cookies that make us lose weight?

If you have questions or comments, please email Stan.

ⒸCopyright Stan G. Kain 2003

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