Brace yourself, Mr. Owl: The world finally knows how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop — and it’s a lot more than three.
It takes an estimated 1,000 swipes of the tongue per centimeter of candy to reach the center of one’s favorite lollipop, according to a new study published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
This ultimately means that a Tootsie Pop, at approximately 1.063 inches in diameter, would need to be licked about 2,500 times for someone to successfully make it to the middle, according to doctoral student Jinzi Huang and his colleagues at NYU.
For years, commercials asking “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop” had left millions of kids — and lolly-loving grown-ups — scratching their heads.
In tests, the area of the lollipop closest to the stick flattened relatively quickly while the front remained dome-shaped.