Food Theory: Tootsie Pops - How Many Licks Does It REALLY Take?

mr turtle how many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop a one a two a three theory wait did you say three or theory theory you know like the name of the show that that isn't an answer to my question neither was three i just bit the darn thing go find mr owl matt howell how many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop it depends what's the ph of your saliva what's the temperature of the room what's the coefficient of friction against your tongue air pressure could come into play do you have a barometer on you um you know what never mind okay so i have a colleague of mine with access to a mass spectrometer prepare a sample for analysis would you oh this could take all [Music] weekend hello internet welcome to food theory the show that scientifically satisfies your sweet tooth with the sweet sweet truth you know as i've grown older i've seen a lot of things change most of them for the better but at the risk of sounding like a crotchety old grumpy pad over here i can say with confidence there is one thing from my childhood that will never ever be improved upon and that is the candy commercial i mean just think back to the absolute murderer's row of candy commercials that they had in the late 90s and early 2000s i'm talking bubble tape i can't stand bubble tape timeless reminder that adults just don't get it i'm talking about the mentos ad where the guy is going to a job interview and accidentally sits on a wet painted bench so it's like oh no but then he pops himself a mentos and just freaking goes with it mentos the freshmaker folks take me back to a simpler time a time when all advertisers had to do was stick some cute kids on a brightly colored set and make them list off the candy flavors [Music] i mean why do you think cadbury's has been running the exact same easter tv spot for decades because old candy commercials can't be improved upon that's why but the most timeless of all the candy television spots in history especially here in the united states has got to be the tootsie roll pop commercial here we've got ourselves some dopey pantsless kid asking various animals how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop the world may never know side note you probably remember him asking a turtle and an owl in the tv version but in the full length commercial he also asks a cow and a fox why don't you ask mr turtle for he's been around a lot longer than i me i buy anybody else feeling like they should probably call chris hanson after that interaction with the fox anyway what is it about this tootsie roll pop commercial that makes it such a classic personally i think it's because the ad raises more questions than it answers why is this human child asking animals questions about candy then why do those animals have specific ideas about what other animals would know the answer to this question why and this one can't be stressed enough why isn't the kid wearing any pants perhaps it's better that some things are left unanswered but not the core question fundamental to this commercial how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop that question my friends will be answered today in great detail because i don't just want to know how many licks it takes i want to know how i can get to that tootsie roll center with the fewest number of licks possible oh sure others have tackled this timeless question from scientists to fellow youtubers but none of them were focused on optimization me i'm here to consume my candy more efficiently than anyone else because candy is all about having fun and nothing is more fun than winning sorry i gotta catch my breath there real quick just having too much fun okay let's begin by asking just straight up how many licks does it take to get to the center of everyone's favorite hard candy lollipop with a chewy tootsie roll center i actually did a personal tally back when i was like 10 and i came up with the number 314 and i remember specifically that it was 314 licks because those are the digits of pie don't leave me like i'm weird didn't you spend your childhoods running tests on candy and then memorizing numerical constants to like 100 points after the decimal well anyway if you didn't i know someone else who did fellow youtuber mr beast who also ran a tootsie pop test of his own on his channel back in 2016. oh look it's little baby beasty it took me 270 licks i thought it would take like a thousand didn't really take that many pretty easy to be honest but believe it or not since the tootsie pop commercial first aired in 1970 a whole bunch of people have sought the actual answer to the question some of them have taken it real seriously the university of wisconsin tackled it with mathematical models and determined a theoretical average of 319.28 licks engineers from the university of michigan created an automated licking machine that averaged out to 411 licks to the center and engineers at purdue university made one that averaged 364 licks now call me a purist but not sure that i love the idea of using an automated licking machine the sheer fact that something like that exists out there in the universe gives me the heebie-jeebies but beyond that consider this the three university studies i mentioned earlier came back with higher numbers than the two real human tests performed by mr beast and i and sure i have no doubt that you can use robotics to simulate the force of a human lick with a substance similar to the tongue but there's just a lot of variables to control for saliva mouth ph temperature texture of the human tongue all of that and so those are precisely the variables i'm gonna tinker with today in order to get me to the center of a tootsie pop in under 270 likes that's right internet i am here today attempting to harness the power of science in order to defeat a four-year-old mr beast video and you know what i'm not alone today i've brought in team theorists who'll help carry out a series of experiments with me say hello theorists hello just wondering when we're gonna get paid sorry i can't really hear you when you all talk over each other like that hopefully it was nothing important anyway the first experiment they'll perform is just a straightforward tally of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop and we're going to play by mr beast's rules for the purposes of our experiment reaching the center means the tootsie roll inside can be seen and tasted so ready to do this team theorist you misplaced my invoice i can send you another three two one get licking we'll check back with him in a few minutes but of course for us theorists it's not enough just to know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop we also want to know why we get to the center especially if that info is going to help us get there faster so let's start with what a tootsie pop is made out of sugar sure there's some palm oil some citric acid and whatever the heck soy lecithin is but by weight a tootsie pop is about 65 sugar and obviously one of the best ways to dissolve sugar is with water and once you know it saliva is about 99.5 water it's like somebody designed tootsie pops to be consumed by humans so let's toss saliva onto the list of things that we'll need to optimize if we're going to beat mr beast's tootsie pop mark of 270 licks but how exactly do we optimize for saliva well let's dig into what exactly goes on when sugar dissolves in water and that requires some understanding of polarity remember in science class when you learn that positive poles of magnets attract negative poles and repel other positive poles but molecules of both water and sugar are polar because they contain hydrogen atoms which are more negative and oxygen atoms which are more positive so when water comes into contact with sugar in our case the specific sugar of sucrose the water's polarity is strong enough to pull the sugar molecules apart in other words if you submerge it tootsie pop in water it'll eventually dissolve down to the tootsie roll center as long as there's enough water that it doesn't get oversaturated by the sugar that is and you see that's the key there there must be enough water molecules present in order to pull every sugar molecule apart because when all the water molecules get paired up with all the sugar molecules no more dissolving can occur so what i'm thinking here is the more saliva the better optimizing our saliva means increasing our amount of saliva so we'll be sure to test that in the next round of experiments speaking of experiments hose experiment number one going there team theorist a lot of brightly colored tongues out there i like what i'm seeing now before they finish i want to toss out a couple other items on our experiment wish list first heat you see heat is commonly used in chemistry to help speed up reactions in order for reactions to occur they need energy and heat oftentimes provides that energy so i'm curious to see if heat would actually help a tootsie pop dissolve faster another factor that we should play with here is acidity our mouths have a pretty neutral ph range but acids are known to be effective at dissolving certain substances by injecting positive hydrogen ions into the solution ions can disrupt the bonds of the original substance and break it down so if we're trying to hack how to get to the center of a tootsie pop fastest let's just go ahead and test whether an acidic substance affects the rate at which a tootsie pop dissolves all right looks like team theorist has all reached the center we've got 450 420 lol and good job amy plus my childhood total of 314 added up to find the average and we get 364.5 licks right on target with those research studies that we talked about earlier but none of us have beaten mr beast which means that we've all failed well you know it's an experiment so we didn't really fail personally like a true failure there researcher number three you know i have a name right now then if we are gonna beat that mr beast tally of 270 we need to test whether saliva volume heat and ph can get us to the center of a tootsie pop in less time so listen up theorist team here's the second part of the experiment we're gonna measure how much time it takes to dissolve a tootsie pop in several different liquids for this experiment we'll need room temperature water representing our lots of saliva condition hot water representing the temperature condition and room temperature lemon juice representing the ph condition lemon juice is highly acidic with a ph between two and three as opposed to our mouth ph which is a neutral seven or so select your tootsie pops we'll need four all with an equal mass let's aim for 17 grams got my four same here how about you number three number three and number three somehow lost focus on his camera forget him he's a straggler we're better off without him anyway start your timers team and let's jump ahead 20 minutes okay 20 minutes in what are we seeing so the one in the hot water seem to start dissolving immediately but the ones in the room temperature seem to not be affected as much alright so we have taken out our tootsie pops weighed them and averaged the results between all of us we have our hot water tootsie pop which went from about 17 grams to about five grams we have our lemon juice which went down to about eight and we have our room temperature water which went down to about seven grams interesting it's not quite exactly what i expected so what do these results mean for our quest to beat mr beast first it's clear from the data that heat is the biggest variable at play so in this final round of experiments i'm gonna let the theorist team use whatever tactic they'd like to get heat involved they can turn up the thermostats in their room they can drink hot water during the experiment they can even exercise as a matter of fact i'm going to assign exercise to researcher 3. oh you've got to be kidding me i most certainly am not kidding exercise can in fact raise your core body temperature by a degree or two in addition to adding heat it's also apparent that we need to get these tootsie pops into contact with as much saliva as possible in order to do that i've instructed the theorist team to use the full length of their tongues this time we're looking for some serious stroke length here that's what i said because more saliva should come into contact with more tootsie roll pop this way furthermore some of the theorists team have been encouraged to chew sugarless gum to help stimulate saliva flow and lastly there's the matter of ph since our lemon juice glass dissolved more slowly than our control glass of room temperature water we're just not gonna worry about ph so that variable's thrown out so one final time the theorist team has been encouraged to change a couple of variables in order to up the heat and increase their saliva as for me i'm not just doing a couple i'm doing them all at once i have an insatiable urge to be better than mr beast at least one thing in life and i will stop at nothing to make sure that this is that thing that's why i'll be doing it all i'm raising the room temperature i'm drinking hot water i'm chewing sugarless gum and i'm exercising and you better believe that i'm going all in on that tongue stroke length yeah i said it so let's do this thing theorist team heck let's bring in the whole fierce gang for this one the more the merrier we're like a little brady bunch here man content back in this era was so much simpler people were delighted by stuff like this now it just barely qualifies as a tick tock oh hey researcher number one is opting for the shower smart heat and humidity folks we are pulling out all the stops with the powers of science on our side surely at least one of us will be able to beat 270 licks i just hope it's me because i'm about to put some very unflattering licking footage out there onto the internet and besting mr beast is pretty much the only thing that's going to make it worth it alright final experiment time three two one go [Music] yep that sound was not added in artificially that was me being bludgeoned to death by my wife using a saint jude steel coffee mug while i was doing my tootsie roll pop experiment the things i go through for science anyway enough about my problems how'd we do guys how many people made it to the center in under 270 licks good job guys congrats to everyone couldn't help but notice that researcher number three didn't make the cut can't say that i'm surprised but now the moment we've all been waiting for the reveal of how many licks it took me to reach the center yeah i don't think anyone was 117 that's right youtube i'm matpat with a lick total of 117 have hereby defeated mr beast i am unashamed to announce that i have defeated mr beast in the contest that he didn't even know that he was a part of food theory editors you know what to do now bring on that confetti fireworks are in order as well heck go nuts with all the pre-loaded celebratory animations that you have readily available throw on the uh the memish kids cheering sound effect ooh what about the anime wow yes i feel so powerful that was um that was a strange fact never saw that one pulled out before anyway thanks for watching everyone i'm matpat and this has been a theory a food theory thank you so much for supporting this brand new channel by the way if you stumbled upon us it's probably because you already like game theory under film theory well guess what food theory is very much the same show just tastier anyway poke that subscribe button like the pillsbury doughboy that it is just so if you want to support what we're doing here if you're liking these episodes if you want us to do more of them hitting that subscribe button tells us yes please continue doing wacky science videos related to food second most important thing that you can do right now check out another episode we uploaded five all here on launch day the one i would point you towards you know how they say the cake is a lie well the cake mix is actually the thing that's lying to you if you want to learn more about that one link is on screen right now i'll see you over there friends

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 4,328,374

Rating: 4.9551353 out of 5

Keywords: tootsie pop, tootsie pops, candy, how many likes does it take, how many licks, commercial, tootsie pop commercial, nostalgia, mr beast tootsie pop, tootsie roll, mr beast, mrbeast, tootsie pop challenge, rosanna pansino, how to cake it, mr cake, nerdy nummies, food, dessert, food science, without a recipe, food myth, food myths, food theorists, food theory, game theory, game theorists, film theory, film theorists, matpat, matpat theory, matpat new channel

Id: qOS5NAdyWDw

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020