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Indestructible Super Mug To Save Humanity
prostoalex writes "Next time a ceramic mug falls on the ground, you won't have to buy a new coffee:"A team of undergraduates at the university in Socorro designed a ceramic mug that can fall 15 feet onto concrete pavement and still hold a full cup of java afterward without leaking."" Thank god I can sleep easy at night ;)
When I first read the summary, I thought these kids had designed some new interesting ceramic material that would prove to have many practical applications. After all, that's what the contest is for...
From TFA:
But the New Mexico Tech team used a different tactic...making part of their mug expendable, to save the rest. In short, they cheated.
Now don't get me wrong...I'm all for thinking outside the box...after all, I'm the one whose egg drop design in high school incorporated a parachute, ensuring my egg could survive a drop from any altitude. I was the clear winner, because I too 'thought outside the box'.
Did I get a commendation for my cleverness? Did I get a write-up in USA Today?
No. I got an F, despite there being no rules whatsoever prohibiting parachutes (although I hear they wrote in that rule the following year).
These New Mexico Tech students 'thought outside the box', and in doing so, completely subverted the whole point of the competition. Using this strategy, they managed to net second place, and they get a newspaper article for it.
Again, bah.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
A team of undergraduates at the university in Socorro designed a ceramic mug that can fall 15 feet onto concrete pavement and still hold a full cup of java afterward without leaking.
The secret is to butter the bottom of the mug, thus ensuring that it always lands the right way up.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
that is relieved I wont spill my coffee when I regularly drop it from heights of 15 feet?
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
I, for one, welcome our new expandable masters.
The NewMexTech students are purportedly working on a new indestructable chair.
It will have the ability to absorb impacts from dropping, kicking or throwing due to sudden fits of rage and violent outbursts of anger.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Its the damn coffee I am concerned about when I drop it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
From TFA "It's rounded (at the bottom)"
That'll sit nicely on a desk...
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
GREAT! change it to be eight feet tall and put lasers on it! We can make a fortune on theintergalactic arms market!
Thank god I can sleep easy at night ;) Not if you drink that cup of Java :-P
Here is a different article with pictures of the mug
We're still a long way away from the Futurama tea cup that reassembles itself after it breaks =).
Its still a neat idea, sort of a "crumple zone" for a coffee mug. What I don't understand is how it still holds liquid after the crash. Are we assuming it lands upright?
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
Like the article says, the issue of dropping a mug to save coffee is entirely in the transfer of kinetic energy to the right places.
... yes, there's entropy and blah blah blah going on but this is a cut and dried version of what you should focus on.
... a million pieces. Ceramic plates were just a spider web on impact (quickly absorbing energy) but the glass seemed to almost always get one bounce.
As the mug falls, it gathers velocity towards the ground (thank you, gravity) and upon impact it stops when it meets the resistance of cement. This resistance means that the prior amount of kinetic energy must be absorbed at some point in the mug or absorbed by the concrete (not too feasible).
I'm going to say that I'm not accounting for everything here
The strategy behind their solution is that they used a "crumple point" at the base of the mug. What they refer to as "the bomb" is really just a crushable base that sufficiently absorbs the energy. Therefore, the energy does not transfer to the coffee (which would thus splash it everywhere). This is a lot like the crumple points on modern car frames. My car's frame has points at which, if I run into something, the energy will be absorbed in the event of extreme energy transfer. This stops the energy from transferring to my body and causing me to splash everywhere. Let me tell you, you do not want to splash everywhere; it's quite messy and rather painful. As a car designer, you'd like to know precisely where energy will be transferred to in the event of an accident so you create crumple zones. If a car is in a sufficient collision, often times it will be necessary to have the vehicle "pulled" which means spending a lot of money to have some goof put it in a very expensive machine that pulls on the frame until everything is back to near perfect specs and calibration.
I, on the other hand, prefer loading it onto a flatbed trailer, attaching a hand winch to both axles and laying underneath it and winching until your friend tells you that the doors can open and they no longer touch the front quarter panels. Alignment? Oh, that's just for rich people and inspectors.
Now, what I don't like about this mug design is that it seems to be a one shot deal for the mug. Yes, you've saved your coffee but your mug is shot.
I'm reminded of when I used to work in a restaurant and ceramic plates and glass would occasionally drop by mistake from my hands and the hands of coworkers. Now, as time went on, I noticed that glass objects like drinking glasses would have one bounce. I do not know why but they would have one bounce and then SMASH
Knowing this, if I saw an empty glass falling, I knew I had one bounce to try and save it but the bounces weren't always too high. Years of hacky sack training on sipas finally became useful. Now, there is a move I was taught that we called a "lazy man" that involved kicking the foot out but actually using the ankle movement to kick the bag up into the air. There were a few times when a glass dropped and after the first bounced I lazy manned it up and caught it and I was a god for 10 minutes at least in the back of the kitchen. Sure, there were times when it just looked like I was booting a glass into the wall but it was worth it. I always wondered if those saved glasses would ever get another bounce if they dropped again.
My work here is dung.
As pointed out in the article, the mug "breaks"...at least part of it does. However, the coffee doesn't spill. I'm not sure how likely I would be to finish my coffee in a mug that has bits of broken ceramic hanging off of it (though some mornings, it's a real possiblity). Beer on the other hand...well, the very idea of split beer...I ... just...can't... talk about it.
Coffee and beer drinkers aside, I wonder if a design that that could be used to transport hazardous or toxic liquids.
The problem with ceramic mugs is not that they are breakable, it is that you can't have a cup of coffee sit in them more than 10 minutes before it is nearly ice cold.
Make me a mug that looks like a nice ceramic, but has the termal insulation value of my vaccum sealed travel mug.
I usually throw my beer at my TV in a rage. Will this mug hold my beer safely?
I think I'll stick my ole reliable Pessimist's Mug to cheer me up in the morning. If I drop it, it was not meant to be.
they got second out of twenty? who got first?
I have an Extreme Gulp from 7-11.
It's 9.5 inches tall, 5.5 inches in diameter and practically indestructable. I have no reservations about chucking it 15 feet up into the air.
It'll hold 52 ounces, but can be modded to hold 38% more.
In 1967 (The Graduate) the future was plastics.
Which is the Next Big Thing? Ceramics or nano-stuff?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Here's a picture of the mugs (pre-drop). http://web.abqtrib.com/art/news06/022006_mugs.jpg And yes they do look sort of like a very ugly bomb.
Concrete feet ? I thought this is an ancient tradition in the Chicago area.
Does General Taco know about this? And what of pour Mrs. Taco. I am sure they would be quite disappointed if they knew their son was aspiring to mediocrity.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Gee. Maybe they could make the new space shuttle tiles out of this stuff?
who's drinking coffee 15 feet in the air?
Using this strategy, they managed to net second place, and they get a newspaper article for it.
:) It is not in the name, and historicaly, the term university, has been reserved for large schools that are divided into multiple colleges. We are a small engineering college and we like it that way. Bigger is not always better - stop trying to ruin the school with your illusions of grandure.
That is the administrations improved PR in work.
As a proud alumni, I'd like to point out, just because our adminstration hates it when we do so, that the name is New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and it is not a University
</rant>
Sorry for that. Several years ago the administration decided make increasing enrollment it's biggest goal, which came with talks of improving freshmen retention. Tech already accepts almost anyone who applies (a good thing), and about half drop out after before completing their junior year. While a couple classes seemed to be "weeding-out classes", most were reasonably challenging for those willing to learn. So there is naturally concern that standards will drop as a result of the administrations direction.
The practice of slapping the word Univerity into all the press releases started at the same time, and the two are linked in my mind, hence the rant.
Anyway, sounds like a fun competition, and best regards to the materials students that designed the project.
I'd like to point out that this is really old news.. like a week or two at this point, shame on Slashdot for being so slow - On the other hand, I'm rather happy to see my mother, Dr. Hirschfeld, being quoted in the national news.
Dr. Hirschfeld has had a long history of having very inovative classes for her engineers... like the Water balloon catapults at Virginia Tech.. that was cool-- of course Slashdot didn't exist then.. but whatever.
Her real claim to fame is low thermal expansion cermamics -- stuff that doesn't change size with a change in temperature - seemingly simple, but very very important.
Do you like your porsche ceramic coated headers? and how well they perform? Well.. thank her, too bad Virginia Tech - those bastards, never paid her the money she was due, but then again.. that's another story entirely..
Well, maybe we have not got the hydrogen fusion yet. And also some diseases are far from being overcome.
Also the fossil fuels problem still needs some more efforts.
For sure mugs technology is getting more and more advanced thanks to all those smart minds!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The big question is: Is it stain resistant. I mean the sort of stain from having a half cup of coffee sit in it for hours at a time, only to be filled up again and repeat for a few months between cleanings. If so, sign me up!
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Clever, but not world changing.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"Next time a ceramic mug falls on the ground, you won't have to buy a new coffee"
Here I was hoping that they had found a way to prevent the coffee to be spilled when dropping the mug.
Dropping a mug 15 meters on concrete is not part of my coffee cup usage patterns anyway.
So what happens if you drop it a second time? You've already broken the part that saves it from the fall (the bomb section). Now that that's gone, you've got nothing protecting the mug from shattering on a second fall.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
who in their right mind would sell a cup that could last? Consumerism is about...well...comsuming, and if stuff stopped breaking you woulden't have much insentive to consume now would you? It's a cool thing, but I doubt it will ever see the light of day.
Fool me once...shame on you, fool me twice...won't be fooled again (our president)
Dick Cheney is probably going to shoot you if you keep using that "chair throwing" joke.
I mean, that old guy doesn't even read Slashdot and he's heard it a million times
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I doubt that it will do any good in my car, which is the only place I'm likely to drop a cup of coffee.
I don't know what's worse. TMM's pathetic ego or the fact that his karma-whoring post will susseccfully be modded as "Interesting" or "Insightful" by assholes who don't want or know to use their mod points responsibly.
On the one hand, it sounds like this mug would probably break if dropped from waist height, since there wouldn't be time for it to right itself. Also, even if it could, it would only work once, since the "Holy Hand Grenade" portion at the bottom would disappear. So this design is, in practice, completely worthless.
On the other hand, I have to appreciate the creation of a contest entry designed to satisfy the verbatim rules of the contest, as my buddy and I are responsible for at least a page of prohibitions in the Botball rules (although I hear some of the things we did are once again legal), so I can't really say I don't appreciate entries like this.
Back on the first hand, it seems ridiculous that the second-place team gets a full-page article which only passingly mentions the first place team and doesn't describe the properties of their entry or how high it was able to survive falling from. If I was on the UMR team, I'd be pretty upset right now.
(And no, I'm not a UMR student/alum)
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
A substance doesn't need to break to absorb energy. Generally, objects are good at either holding their shape, absorbing energy, or transferring energy, though I may not have the right bases.
So is it topologically equivalent to a 4-dimensional hyperdoughnut?
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
Moss: "Oh, don't mind that, that's why always make two cups of tea."
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Who cares about coffee?
Moderation in All Things... Especially Moderation - gurutc
But this is retarded.
Did the kids come up with a new, unbreakable ceramic? No.
Did they come up with something that can be used more then once? No
Did they come up with something that would retain its coffee if knocked off a table? No
When i read the summary I thought: A coffee mug that I can drop whenever, from whereeer, and it'll keep its coffee.
This article is nothing like the summary makes it sound like. These cups can be used a grand total of one time (after which you need a whole new crumple zone), and would hold coffee if dropped from straight up and down. However, if it landed at a tilt, I'm fairly certain it would spill everything. Who cares about saving the $0.50 worth of cheap coffee if you have to go buy another huge mug to hold it?
Better solution for those of you who continually drop your coffee. It's called a "Travel Mug", and is already designed NOT to spill upon drop, AND can be reused after said drop!
Ok, so yes, they solved that little competition. But if I won the "make a coffee mug out of used condoms that won't break if hurled at a freshman's head from 15 feet up" award, is that news?
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
That's the thing with automatic garbage collection.
The rules of chess say exactly what moves are allowed. No other moves can be made by either player. There's no rule in chess that says nuclear weapons can't be used, but that lack doesn't mean you can nuke your opponent. (In formal chess matches, I'm sure there are specific rules against assaulting the other players and the judges, but I'm only guessing here)
Competitions like this normally give a goal, and what's not allowed. Thus, people should be creative in how they accomplish the goal. Rather than disallowing a parachute (which would discourage creativity) the rules could be written to include flight time in a points structure, so that the team that gets the egg to the ground intact and the fastest wins. Alternatively a competion like this could be more chess-like by providing all the teams with the same materials, that way you can't buy your way to a win.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
good to the last drop
I once had a cup that won't break
To make it, engineering it did take
I made it to be cool,
But now I feel like a fool
Because I dropped my cup in a lake!
Piping hot coffee
Sealed in a ceramic mug,
Indestructible
I don't even want to know what the padding under my carpet looks like.
From the look of those things, you'd have to pre-heat them for about 10 minutes before you poured your coffee into them. That is, of course, if your arms are strong enough to lift the damned things !
The students will next tackle the problem of fomulating a concrete that will withstand the inpact of the improved mug.
I'll need something to drink after my 15 foot fall while waiting for the ambulance to show up.
If you drop the cup with coffee, while in mid-air it's basically two objects: the cup and the coffee. When the cup starts landing (and decceleration because of the "bomb" breaking up), it's like if the cup was falling slowly, and the coffee was falling faster, which can be translated to a completely still cup and the falling coffee. Now, if you drop liquid into a cup from some height, it will spill. The slower decceleration only reduces the speed of the coffee relative to the cup.
Also, what about the cup falling on one side because the bomb breaks up better at that side?
It would be better if they used a car-suspension scheme: not-too-fast decceleration when landing and slowly returning to normal state with a spring.
NASA does this all the time. Avoiding a problem is often way better than solving it. Prevention vs. Cure.
Would you rather avoid accidents while driving your car, or survive them? Suriving an accident often involves long term disability. Avoiding the accident in the first place is much better.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"Next time a ceramic mug falls on the ground, you won't have to buy a new coffee: ..."
so what you're saying is, this new mug is spill-proof?
#DeleteChrome
Not with all that extra java you wont!
Dick Cheney is probably going to shoot you if you keep using that "chair throwing" joke.
I wish he would shoot me, then I could come back and apologize to him and his family for all the problems I had caused.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
So, why don't we hear about the folks who won first place? How much do you want to bet that they used some super high tech ceramic that simply doesn't break when dropped from 9'? Of course, that wouldn't be nearly as 'interesting' as that other monstrosity...
The New Mexico Tech team didn't even win, they came in 2nd. University of Missouri-Rolla won.
bah, JAVA is "so ninetees"
I keep reading these comments about how the bottom is "heavier" than the top, so it'll fall faster. The secret is that it is denser, so it's less affected by air resistance than the top, thus leading to its, well, leading position during the fall.
Just junk food for thought...
Coming in second was a meaningful experience for the team and something they'd like to do again, Burr said.
Aim high, brave souls.
Aim high.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
and still hold a full cup of java afterward without leaking
So they use a garbage collector?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Phew! At last, someone has the sense to make a ceramic mug that can withstand a 15 foot fall. (I can't tell you how many times I've dropped my coffee mug from 15 feet!)
about the mug that won first place?
... "indestructible super mug" that "... save[s] humanity" "... kind of looks like a bomb".
Really, the only way I could see dropping my precious precious sweet wonderful precious coffee would be if someone chopped off the hand that was holding it. Seriously.
I'll bet that if you have a really good ear (I don't) you can tell if the glass got bruised from the sound it makes. If you're breaking up cast iron (real cast iron, which many of you youngsters have never seen) with a 16lb hammer you just flail away at it with an earsplitting BONG BONG BONG BONG until it finally goes thud. Then you just barely smack it and it shatters - don't hit it full force after the thud or it's likely to go off like a grenade! This seems like a similar phenomena to me.
Throw away bruised glassware. It can be incredibly fragile and might shatter from the slightest shock.
These New Mexico Tech students 'thought outside the box', and in doing so, completely subverted the whole point of the competition. Using this strategy, they managed to net second place, and they get a newspaper article for it.
And no I wasn't going to do the cliche, but remember the story about the millions NASA pumped into making the ballpoint pen that could be used in zero gravity, but the Soviets saved time and money by using a pencil. (Even though I remember reading a snopes article)
But the lesson is the same. In the real world, you goal is to accomplish tasks and it doesn't matter how sometimes.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Cost of mug to Starbucks: $0.50
Cost of coffee to Starbucks: $0.20
Price of coffee at Starbucks: $2.50
Cost of bad customer service: Priceless
Any coffee shop worth its salt should replace a broken cup of coffee... within reason. Of course they are under no obligation to, but it's got to be cheaper than investing in bomb shaped, ceramic nightmares from hell.
This is an intreresting academic exercise... right up there with "Who can design a vessel that can save an egg dropped from 200 feet?". That gem has kept school kids ammused for decades.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Aerogel
http://news.umr.edu/news/2006/mugdrop06.html
I drop that bomb, the bottom shatters and ... yes, my coffee's still inside, I can still drink it, but after dropping it once, the bottom part is probably not doing too well a job at holding it upright.
So I can either place that sorta-kinda designer piece I got then (hey, it's a one-of-a-kind after dropping, none will look the same way when they hit the floor!) and carefully balance it so it stays upright, or I can go out and do what I do now already after dropping my coffee:
I go out and buy a new cup.
What's saved is the cleaning up part. And that's done by someone else anyway...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
Not a true story really..
Mug considered to be indestructible when using a crumple zone? Well then you could consider any car used in French to be an indestructible super car too considering they don't consider the outside of the car either.
You've held an inconsequential grudge so long, we're making you an honorary woman, with a free upgrade to "married" too!
Target has Lexan, "virtually unbreakable" coffee mugs with near spill-proof lids for $9. Of course, they don't look like a mug with a pineapple glued to the bottom, but they do fit into a car's cupholder.
Instead of broken cups we would now have broken toes and cracked pavement...
Oh well, what the hell...
What's saved is the cleaning up part
Weeeel, yes. Technically, in that the coffee is not on the floor and won't need to be given 5 seconds of attention with a wet rag. The pointy shards of shattered ceramic, now, they're every-fucking-where. And a lot harder to deal with.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
In an effort to be negative, you're too far inside the slashbox mode of thinking. Grab a blurb from the article, take an angle and get crabby. That or you are just bitter :)
;) Let me get you a cup of coffee so you can relax.
I think you have a right to be bitter. Per the rules you posted, you should not have gotten an F. Now, if during your class the spirit of the class was to deal with materials or polymers or impact resistance then your parachute idea would have been against the spirit of the contest. Egg dropping contests are common in engineering and science classes, and kids have been subverting them for years, but each class has a slightly different reason for introducing the subject. Sometimes, it's just to see if the kids are clever enough to think "outside the box."
And perhaps that's the point here. Get a bunch of engineering students to think about a project and see which ones think creatively. Why design a $10,000 coffee mug when a $10 design could work just fine?
That being said, I think you were ripped off and I think these kids were given a gift. Egg dropping contests are notoriously run by grumpy people tired of kids who "subvert spirit of the rules" which is incredibly stupid if you just use the project as a grading exercise. It then becomes "how well did you follow the rules?" not "how creative are you?"
A parachute is highly practical, while this design is not at all practical for actually drinking coffee. Then again, I have no idea if any of the other submissions were practical either. And the blurb you pulled from the article, that could just be some throwaway line the reporter slapped down. We have no real idea what other designs there were and if there were any other type of creative designs that were just as wacky and impractical.
In other words, I'm now confident you are just bitter
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
After you slice the crap out of your mouth drinking from a chipped cermic cup.
Hmm. Unfortunately, they've mastered crumple zones at the expense of understanding basic laws of physics...
That would be "aerodynamics", not "gravity", that might help the mug to align its top side above the "heavier" sacrificial bomb side. After all, I think that Galileo confirmed that the heavier cannonball doesn't fall faster than the light one, at the Tower of Pisa.
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
Those mugs look like the Holy Grail.
He doesn't have to make two cups of tea each time.
For most cases where a beverage may be dropped by accident, people use Tommee Tippee mugs. Reading the subject I wondered if that was what had been designed, and in fact whether the Tommee Tippee mug is a better solution anyway.
The cardboard things with the plastic lids with small spout you get from coffee takeways are a similar principle, but not as robust. Then again, they aren't associated with small children or elderly patients either.
The article features the second-place winners, so what does the first-place design look like?
Dick Cheney is probably going to shoot you if you keep using that "chair throwing" joke.
I wish he would shoot me, then I could come back and apologize to him and his family for all the problems I had caused.
He only did that because of some political ass kissing and under-the-table palm greasing.
Live forever, or die trying.
Maybe it is interesting shaped mug but try to explain that your cup of joe is just a unbreakable mug to any security person at the airport or any other transportation system with security which is about all now. I assume they will cavity search you also while they are at it ;)
In most cases, the organizers of the competition have a management, not engineering mindset.
These folks typically do NOT like the unexpected, especially in contests they're organizing.
If you participate in these competitions, you learn some really important things about engineering:
As an engineer, you must listen to your Client and determine:
What the Client he says he wants.
What the Client really wants.
What the Client needs.
What the Client is willing and able to pay for.
What you actually (can) deliver.
Typically, at the start, no two of the above are the same. You have to make all of them equal and convince the Client it was his idea the whole time. You can do this before quoting the job, or you can do it via change orders after the job has begun.
But skipping directly from "What they say they want" to "What you actually deliver" does not get you paid. It's a shortcut that just pisses off the Client. And if you're really stupid, it embarrasses the Client.
If the above sounds unfair, it's not. This is the way it is. Get used to it.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
with that solved, we can start addressing minor quibbles, like a cancer and avian flu
--AlexC
Just because I dont agree with climate change doesnt make me a troll
Clever? Outside-of-the-box? I thought it was the obvious solution! The rules even seem to encourage such approaches, saying (in the "standard rules") that the vehicle which gets the egg down slowest wins (I rather like the other version - fastest descent time wins. Seems much more interesting challenge), and the vehicle which is the lightest wins in a tie. The only bit that seems like it could make things difficult for the use of parachutes is the requirement that it wind up in the landing zone, where a parachute might drift off course.
The nature of the problem is such that a parachute is a good choice. The structure of the rules and judging guidelines is such that a parachute is a good choice. And it's an obvious choice, it being a thing that was invented for the specific purpose of limiting the falling speed of objects in the atmosphere.
So yeah, I don't really get why using a parachute to solve that problem is bad. It solves the problem as stated, within the rules as stated, and has a very good chance of scoring very well using the scoring criteria as stated. If the organizers specifically want complicated solutions they need to set up the rules to favor that.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Give me a break.
I still have a nice, big mug that I bought in 1987 as a freshman in college. Its made out of this wonderful, space-age material called 'plastic'.
Amazing stuff.
- Necron69
If you look at the press release from Tech, and not the USA Today article, they never mention university, so your rant is a bit off base.
Oh, and BTW, I went to Tech, too. I still like to call it School of Mines, though, as it was one of the land grant colleges from back in the 1890's. Freshmen retention has always been a big issue for Tech because most classes were decreasing by 30-40% between their freshmen and sophmore year. In my time there, they were fine with that decrease if it was due to students being unable to maintain the required course load, but they were doing studies to make sure it wasn't due to other problems.
I'd like to hear the rest of the story:
Who won? What was their design like?
My mug is Stainless steel why bother with ceramic. I can drop it from anywhere. And if I feel ambitious I can beat people with it. It can also break ceramic cups. Yes, I know it a ceramic cup contest but, why bother with ceramic.
1 .html
I thought that undergraduate students at this "University" would be working on more meaningfull experiments.
Seems like this experiment belongs in High School. Reminds me of the high school egg drop contest.
First place was multiple ceramic cups with a very thick base.
Diffrent cups were dropped by each member until they broke. Each member had one drop.
I think that is called blind luck. And in a scientific comunity this test can not be reproduced.
Second place was a crumple zone thing.
Sure works well but, it is not practical and adds at least 50% if not more material.
Any forward thinking here? I don't think so.
First place:
http://news.umr.edu/news/2006/mugdrop06.html
second place:
http://infohost.nmt.edu/mainpage/news/2006/15feb0
You know, I could make a coffee mug out of Zytel or similar and you'd be able to drop that sucker out of an airplane. I fail to see how, in the grand scheme of things, this is such a big deal.
It's not like they even came up with some sort of more resilient ceramic for this or anything even remotely useful for anything beyond some sort of intelectual masturbation over a dish dropping contest.
Big fucking deal.
The pencil story is false, but based on fact. Basically, NASA (and the Russians) used pencils for a while, but didn't like have pencil dust or broken leads floating around the capsules. Some guy came up with the design on his own and started selling them to NASA and they worked. The Russians started using them too.
Thank god I can sleep easy at night ;)
But doesn't increased availability of coffee make it harder to sleep?
My first skim over the article was sadly misleading. I thought they'd developed a mug that you could drop from 2 stories up, full of coffee, and have it land and still have the coffee in it, no leaks.
/thought/ I felt my IQ drop a few points...
Then I find out this is just a college-kid version of "The Egg Drop". Sigh.
Hey, I have a mug that I can drop from a few stories up, too. It's a plastic Timmies cup, still in the box with the protective styrofoam. Wow, I'm an engineering student now!
Hmm, I
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
After finding a pic and reading up on it, I discovered the mug can only be dropped once not repeatedly like the blurb implied. It's more like a crash helmet. Crash once it protects your head and you throw it away. So it gets dropped once you can drink out of the mug. Drop it again and no more mug. Also misleading is that it can hold the coffee when you drop it. It looks more like SpongeBob's pineapple home than a coffee mug.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Make one that won't spill when it falls 15 feet.
...which survived being dropped from 5 floors up (from the pool deck of the Baltimore Waterfront Hilton, in case anyone cares): http://kriven.mse.uiuc.edu/recent/geopolymers/ACER S%20GP%20mug%20dropping/mug2005.htm
And this one won the year before, with a 50-ft drop onto concrete: http://kriven.mse.uiuc.edu/recent/geopolymers/ACER S%20GP%20mug%20dropping/mug2004.htm
Note: neither of these had "sacrificial layers" or anything like that - they were a room-temperature cured aluminosilicate ceramic ("geopolymer") with carbon fibre reinforcing, made by the "traditional powerhouse" (TFA's words, not mine) Illinois team.
s/explodes/a splode/
http://outcampaign.org/
I have some ceramic mugs and plates right now that can survive a 15 ft. fall to a hardwood floor. It's the only reason I still have them after 12 years.
What, held under the dorsal guiding feather?
If the point was to produce a mug that could be dropped multiple times, was practical , attractive, and so expensive that no one in there right mind would ever purchase it then no they didn't "win". If it was to win the contest then they came damn close with a 50 cent solution. I don't think people realize that the real problem to be solved was how to "win" the contest not to produce a practical mug. A practical mug would be plastic or metal not ceramic.
We learned about these tactics in my classes in engineering.
Typically in aircraft, bridges, etc. A weak point will be designed into the object. This way, the engineers can control the failure, and make it break the way they want. Cars even use the same idea with crumple zones.
It also makes the circumstances of a failure more predictable: Without a designed weak point there may be a less significant weakness due to a manufacturing flaw. With the designed flaw, it's possible to know precisely when the part must be replaced to ensure safety.
The neat thing about their design is that it could be modified to attach to existing mugs and protect them. You just have to replace the "bomb" on the rare occasion you drop the mug.
Melting requires more equipment.
The most common reason to smash up cast iron (that I know of) is to salvage lead from large diameter cast iron bell & spigot plumbing. You can get 2 to 5 pounds of lead per joint from old sewer lines with no tools other than a heavy hammer (or big rock, if you are patient enough). This can be a significant source of income for some people.
Incidentally, an expert with a torch can melt a steel stud out of a cast iron engine block without damaging the threads in the block. It's an impressive trick - you need skills to pull it off!
Bah all you want, but these guys came up with some very creative ideas. They basically brought a clever but low-tech structural engineering solution and stone-age materials to a materials science competition, and whooped ass. This proves that materials aren't always as important as one might think. The materials people who got beat should be thinking about changing their majors right about now.
The idea of using a sponge coated in clay slip (very wet, pourable clay), which sponge then burns off in the firing leaving an intricate web of very thin, sponge-shaped ceramic - that's f'ing brilliant.
It's called "Correlle." :-/
The story I heard was that when they first invented Correlle a guy took a mug (sans handle) to the top of the building (over 3 stories) and tossed the mug into the parking lot. It bounced. Repeatedly.