Now, you're hanging around on everything, so I know you've got spare time on your hands.

Plain M&Ms are much fun for the intellectually challenged (or 'everything' affected) people of today's world. Basically you grab two of them between your thumb and forefinger and gently apply pressure until one of them breaks, you immediately eat this 'faulty' one and continue. By the end of the 600g packet you are probably very bored, but you have also found the strongest one in the whole pack! After you have continued using the 'winner' of the pack with other packs you will have a very strong M&M's (and a very stagnant brain, as well as a full stomach.)

When you think the time is right, you can pop the 'ultimate winner' in an envelope (the special padded ones of course) and send it to the head office, with a note saying: "Please use for breeding purposes."

Now that this process is complete you may return to compulsive noding...

The International M&M's Intelligence Center...

The idea that you can find the strongest M&M in the pack by comparing one until it breaks, then using the leftover one to compare in a serial fashion, is simply wrong.

As I see it, you are applying stress to the surface coating of an M&M each time you compress it. Following the method outlined above, you would end up comparing an M&M with the stress fatigue of up to (bag total - 2 pieces) compressions against the final M&M in the pack, which would have not been stressed previously. This cannot be, by any stretch of the imagination, a balanced test.

To do this right, I suggest a system of "playoff" rounds: Take pairs of M&Ms from the bag and test them, placing the "winners" aside. If you have an odd number in the bag, take the final piece and place it with the winners, as a random seed. Then pour all the winners back in the bag and repeat the process until you end up with one final M&M. This is much more likely to be the strongest M&M in the bag.

(You can then repeat the process per bag, then play the bag winners off each other, but if you have that much time, get a job!)


(note: as far as I know, this is how most sports championships are decided nowadays.)
Of course, being an engineer I must point out Yet Another Problem (TM) with testing all the M&M's (TM) from a bag against the previous winner using your fingers. The strong M&M (TM) heats up due to body temperature, and loses much of its structural strength, as the material inside the shell softens. Secondly, the thumb provides a much larger surface area to the device under test (DUT) than the forefinger provides to its DUT. This will lead to skewing in the results, though it might be offset by the additional heat provided to the thumb DUT because of not only a larger surface area, but a greater blood flow, and more heat transfer to the DUT. Use of a vice, pliers, or other room temperature object is therefore suggested.

Obviously, though, each M&M (TM) has surface and internal imperfections which will affect the results. You may ask, "Well DUH! That's what we're determining with this test!" Let me propose, however, a situation wherein this is detrimental to the test. If a strong M&M (TM) has a minute dimple just the right shape of the other M&M (TM) then it would provide more surface area to the second, weaker M&M. By spreading the stress over a larger surface the result would be the weaker M&M (TM) sapping power from the strong M&M.

To combat this each M&M (TM) must face similar surfaces on both sides. This can be accomplished with another metal blank between the two M&M's.

The evolutionary aspects of such dimples, however, are beyond the scope of this discussion.
One thing that I feel should be mentioned, but hasn't, for whatever reason, is the precise emotional state of the M&Ms in question.

Presuming this sort of culling is meant to ultimately produce a race of "Uber M&Ms" (if you will allow), I think this factor must be taken into consideration.

Imagine you have just cast the M&Ms out upon the table like the bones of a soothsayer, and then you begin to separate the men from the boys in whichever of the above mentioned methods (either the playoffs or the "King of The Ring" method). The blues and yellows, browns and reds, greens and other, are now forced to watch as their brothers/sisters are forced to engage in a stress test to the death a la Kirk v. Spock.

These would have to be some pretty cold candies for them not to feel the tension, with the oppression of a suspense-stained curtain billowing over them. Some, I hypothesize, would mentally crack under the pressure, breaking down into a candy-coated coma.


The only way to protect against this sort of emotional trauma (but not the ruthless slaughter) would be to separate them right out of the bag. Then, you could bring them each in, one by one (or two-by-two, depending on method selected) to face their opponent. Of course, many valuable traits that would (following the natural course of evolution) become prominent would instead find themselves undesirable; these would be traits are being bred out in favor of just one allele. This leads to a limited gene pool !!!

I conclude that we should not force our beloved M&Ms to give up their previous traits which have made them great e.g. color coating, simply in favor of dull-witted structural integrity!? After all, where is the fun in that?

All Editing by : OneDragons

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