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 ;)

Crumple Zones & the Lazy Man Maneuver

[eldavojohn]

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.

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 ... yes, there's entropy and blah blah blah going on but this is a cut and dried version of what you should focus on.

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 ... 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.

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.

Not a university :)

[pavon]

Using this strategy, they managed to net second place, and they get a newspaper article for it.

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 :) 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.

</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.

Re:Bah.

[Isotopian]

I fully agree with you, as I like to do the same type of thing myself. I was just pointing out that this specific example seems to be a bit un sportsmanly. My high school math class held a catapult competition, with the only limit on size being 'table-sized'. Imagine their surprise when we rolled up with a 9 foot roman catapult using 200 feet of bungee cable. My teacher said 'I said small ones!' to which we retorted, "you said table sized, and we like big tables." The following year, there was a specific weight limit in the competition.

Re:excuse me, you dropped your coffee

[drsquare]

Metal cups make the brew taste funny.

Re:excuse me, you dropped your coffee

[zen-theorist]

sadly, metal does not shield human fingers from java heat the same way ceramic does.