www.csua.org/u/wcr -> news.yahoo.com/science-reveals-not-spill-coffee-walking-190011389.html
Science Reveals How Not to Spill Your Coffee When Walking Science Reveals How Not to Spill ... Ever wondered why it's so hard to walk with a cup of coffee without spilling? It just so happens that the human stride has almost exactly the right frequency to drive the natural oscillations of coffee, when the fluid is in a typically sized coffee mug. New research shows that the properties of mugs, legs and liquid conspire to cause spills, most often at some point between your seventh and tenth step. So says a pair of fluid physicists at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). They investigated the science of sloshing in a new study published in the journal Physical Review Letters E, and calculated the natural frequency at which coffee sloshes back and forth when held in mugs of a variety of sizes, from a dainty espresso cup to a cappuccino behemoth. They found that a normal human gait moves at nearly the same frequency, so each step amplifies the coffee's heave-ho motion.
low on caffeine -- make matters worse by causing chaos in your cup, increasing the chance of a splash over the rim. By modeling the fluid and walking dynamics of the situation, and comparing the math with some real-world walking-with-coffee experiments, the UCSB scientists have uncovered a few tips for bleary-eyed coffee cup carriers.
Coffee drinkers often attempt to walk quickly with their cups, as if they might manage to reach their destination before their sloshing java waves reach a critical height. It turns out that the faster you walk, the closer your gait comes to the natural sloshing frequency of coffee. To avoid driving the oscillations that lead to a spillage, walk slowly.
The researchers found that when study participants focused on their cups, the average number of steps they took before spilling coffee increased greatly. Krechetnikov and his graduate student Hans Mayer, the primary author of the study, suggested two explanations for this result: First, focusing on one's cup tends to engender slower walking, and second, it dampens the noise, or chaotic sloshing, in the cup. Whether focused carrying decreases the amount of noise because we perform "targeted suppression," automatically counteracting the sloshing of the liquid with small flicks of our wrists, or because we simply hold the cup more steadily when we're looking at it, the researchers could not say. If you take off suddenly, a huge coffee wave will build up almost instantly, and it will crash over the rim after just a few steps. But the best way to prevent coffee spilling might be to find an unusual cup. According to Krechetnikov, ideas from liquid sloshing engineering studies, which historically were done to stabilize fuel tanks inside missiles, indicate three possibilities for spill-free cup designs: "a flexible container to act as a sloshing absorber in suppressing liquid oscillations, a series of annular ring baffles arranged around the inner wall of the container to achieve sloshing suppression, or a different shape cup."
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yamaka, official scientist of glorious nation of kazakhstan, has completed his 12-year study of people, even those with very funny retardation, and found that it takes some experience with carrying a cup full of liquid and that 85% of men can master the task after a few sessions of practice. unfortunately, his report shows that even though they were not part of the study, it is expected that only 38% of women could potentially be able to carry a cup of coffee without spilling it regardless of the extent of their training due to his previous declaration that women's brains are the size of a squirrel's.
retired vet o 6 hrs ago Watch any senior NCO in any branch of the service. Chief petty officers can do it on ships at sea in the middle of a hurricane, and not spill a drop.
Snoopy o 7 hrs ago After reading the title of this article, I just HAD to click on it. I could just imagine the "scientists" experiments for this study. I think, by now, I know how to carry a cup of coffee without spilling it. I doubt there is an epidemic of spilled coffee in this world. Most people should have learned, by adulthood, to be careful when carrying hot liquids.
bike o 4 hrs ago Admittedly I'm not as smart as the average scientist (I guess not even as smart as a Yahoo writer), but what does the phrase "almost exactly" mean?
Chatsworth, California o 4 hrs ago Back when topless bars were popular for an extra buck the woman bartender would put her nipple in your cold beer while walking over to you and not a drop would slosh out. Over at the s & m bar she would do the same with hot coffee.
Liz o 5 hrs ago I've known for years that slowing down my walk kept my coffee from spilling, even knew it had to do with my walking, its called common sense and I wonder why we keep having these studies and research into stuff no one really needs proved.
Fort Worth, Texas o 7 hrs ago I don't really mind people wasting their time on things like this, but if the result is walk slower and don't stumble to avoid spilling coffee, then your experiment didn't turn up anything.
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