Cookies and Air Pressure

by Dr. Mary Ann Smith

While baking sugar cookies a few months ago, my children and I noticed that we were having trouble with some of our cookie cutters. After we pressed the cookie cutters into the dough, no amount of shaking would cause the cookies to fall out of the cookie cutters onto the baking sheet!

We had three types of cookie cutters:

Image of 3 different shaped cookie cutters

The types (2) and (3) always released the cookie dough with only one shake. Type (1) was giving us all the trouble. After thinking about this for a while, I realized that air pressure was making the dough stay in these cookie cutters.

  1. Why does air pressure keep the dough in the Type (1) cookie cutters, but not in the other two types?

  2. How can I change the Type (1) cookie cutter so that cookies will come out easily?

"Food for thought" from your Science-By-Mail pen pal,

Dr. Mary Ann Smith
Atmospheric Sciences Competency
NASA Langley Research Center

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