Why am I not surprised MIT is involved.
A team of mechanical engineers at MIT recently developed an “Oreometer” to test the optimal way of separating the two halves of an Oreo cookie, so that the wafers and the creme filling inside remained unbroken.
For those interested in the full paper:
Fluid mechanics beyond rheology has also been applied to understand and improve food science, including […] solving how you can carry your nearly-full coffee cup without spilling (i.e., by walking backward).
This strikes me as a perfect example of spherical-cow bias – walking backwards with your hot coffee is a great idea as long as you are on an unbounded plane with nothing to run into!
our team really needs one of these. we go through a lot of Oreos at competitions. And whenever one is split the wrong way it throws us of our game and we loose our next match.
Reminds me of this.
0:8
Slightly more serious than the other inventions, but something I thought was cool: soft body robots!
It isn’t really a robot yet, but researchers in Hong Kong have made a non-newtonian fluid-based magnetic slime that can be controlled externally and can reach small, tough spaces. The slime is made of borax + polyvinyl alcohol and has small neodymium magnets that make it controllable. Also, the slime can heal itself, is electrically conductive, can grab/swallow stuff, and is non-toxic (with a silica layer). Really promising stuff!
Here’s some videos of it :
Slime passing through various materials
Slime grabbing wires
The paper came out this March and I couldn’t find a free version, but here’s the link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adfm.202112508