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With the Ig Nobel Prizes just around the corner, there's at least one more entry worthy of consideration: research on the physics of maximally satisfying candy consumption. Yesterday, a team of Austrian physicists posted a preprint of their research paper titled, "Sticky physics of joy: On the dissolution of spherical candies."

Don't be fooled by the title, however; candy physics is serious business! As the authors note in their abstract, "Serious questions on the optimal strategy of enjoying a candy will be addressed, like whether it is wise to split the candy by breaking it with the teeth or not."