April 29, 2009

How Many Licks?



Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?
This classic commercial got Hunter thinking and curious. He has discussed wanting to try it out and when he received a tootsie pop yesterday he set out to find out. We said go for it. He would lick 10 add it up.... lick another 10 add it up...etc. It was funny watching him.

He came up with 4,422 licks to get to the center.

So I looked online and this is what I found.

Conclusions
"The data suggests that it takes approximately
508 licks to reach the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop when alternating the licking side. Since the procedure calls for equal licking of both sides of the Tootsie Roll Pop and completion is determined by core contact on either side, one could reach the core with fewer licks by focusing on only one side of the Tootsie Roll Pop. If one were to select the side closer to the core, it would theoretically require approximately 254 licks to reach the center.

One could look into the effects of tongue size, saliva production, tongue retraction and other variables on the number of licks necessary. The methods contained are easily adapted to further experimentaion."

2 comments:

El said...

I like Hunter's method better! Science is best done in person, not by research!

Grandma M said...

I think if the West Family has that much extra time on their hands , they can come up and visit Grandma and Grandma Matkin......... We could count the licks up here....