Teh One Who Knocks
12-02-2015, 01:12 PM
by Shayne Jacopian - Red Orbit
http://i.imgur.com/2pWfSUR.jpg
Guys, we've all been there-- you use the urinal at the restroom, finish up, and notice that you have splashback all over your pants. Thankfully, physicists at Utah State University may have solved this problem.
According to Gizmodo, Tadd Truscott, director of the Utah State University Splash Lab, and Randy Hurd, a graduate student, have developed a urinal insert design that effectively traps urine so it can’t splash back all over your nice khakis, and they presented their findings earlier this week at an American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting, according to the source.
In 2013, the Splash Lab offered tips for the best ways to pee to avoid splashback on your khakis. They suggested that sitting down to pee and aiming towards to back of a urinal at a downward angle (and standing as close as possible) were the best techniques. They even made a handy video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=UgOx7zPtsaM
Truscott and Hurd decided to look at urinal insert design as another way to prevent splashback. The researchers said there were a few broad categories of these things, and that some were more effective at trapping urine than others. For example, some use an absorbent cloth to trap pee—however, they eventually get saturated and have a tendency to make the problem worse.
“If you see one of these in a bathroom, you had best just move to a stall,” the researchers told Gizmodo.
Another design is a plastic honeycomb structure, where plastic pillars are sandwiched between two permeable layers. Ideally, urine gets in and doesn’t get out, Hurd and Truscott say that they have a tendency to not drain quickly enough.
When they decided that the khaki-wearing men of the world deserve better, they started studying Syntrichia caninervis, a moss that survives in dry climates by absorbing and retaining as much water as possible. In fact, they’d just written a paper on the stuff, so a lot of their work was done already.
Could they recreate this material?
It turns out, a lot of that work was already done. Vantablack, the “blackest material ever made,” apparently isn’t just for goths (and, you know, scientists calibrating astronomical instruments). It also does a great job absorbing piss!
“The substance consists of a tall (relatively) forest of carbon nanotubes into which light can enter, but does not come out,” the researchers told Gizmodo. “Looking at pictures of this material is very eerie because it doesn’t reflect light in any way. We thought if it works with light, maybe we can find the conditions that make it work with droplets (to the physicist), or pee (for the American working man).”
Vantablack is pretty expensive, but it served as a template for a urinal insert design that utilized a similar structure as the material and which was meticulously tweaked for maximum urine retention.
And of course, this doesn’t just have implications for urinal inserts, according to Truscott and Hurd.
“While we find the connection to urinals interesting, we are confident that the scientific community will have interest in the interaction between the splashing droplet and the pillars, and understanding how pillars can be used to suppress the splashing of impacting droplets.”
http://i.imgur.com/2pWfSUR.jpg
Guys, we've all been there-- you use the urinal at the restroom, finish up, and notice that you have splashback all over your pants. Thankfully, physicists at Utah State University may have solved this problem.
According to Gizmodo, Tadd Truscott, director of the Utah State University Splash Lab, and Randy Hurd, a graduate student, have developed a urinal insert design that effectively traps urine so it can’t splash back all over your nice khakis, and they presented their findings earlier this week at an American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting, according to the source.
In 2013, the Splash Lab offered tips for the best ways to pee to avoid splashback on your khakis. They suggested that sitting down to pee and aiming towards to back of a urinal at a downward angle (and standing as close as possible) were the best techniques. They even made a handy video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=UgOx7zPtsaM
Truscott and Hurd decided to look at urinal insert design as another way to prevent splashback. The researchers said there were a few broad categories of these things, and that some were more effective at trapping urine than others. For example, some use an absorbent cloth to trap pee—however, they eventually get saturated and have a tendency to make the problem worse.
“If you see one of these in a bathroom, you had best just move to a stall,” the researchers told Gizmodo.
Another design is a plastic honeycomb structure, where plastic pillars are sandwiched between two permeable layers. Ideally, urine gets in and doesn’t get out, Hurd and Truscott say that they have a tendency to not drain quickly enough.
When they decided that the khaki-wearing men of the world deserve better, they started studying Syntrichia caninervis, a moss that survives in dry climates by absorbing and retaining as much water as possible. In fact, they’d just written a paper on the stuff, so a lot of their work was done already.
Could they recreate this material?
It turns out, a lot of that work was already done. Vantablack, the “blackest material ever made,” apparently isn’t just for goths (and, you know, scientists calibrating astronomical instruments). It also does a great job absorbing piss!
“The substance consists of a tall (relatively) forest of carbon nanotubes into which light can enter, but does not come out,” the researchers told Gizmodo. “Looking at pictures of this material is very eerie because it doesn’t reflect light in any way. We thought if it works with light, maybe we can find the conditions that make it work with droplets (to the physicist), or pee (for the American working man).”
Vantablack is pretty expensive, but it served as a template for a urinal insert design that utilized a similar structure as the material and which was meticulously tweaked for maximum urine retention.
And of course, this doesn’t just have implications for urinal inserts, according to Truscott and Hurd.
“While we find the connection to urinals interesting, we are confident that the scientific community will have interest in the interaction between the splashing droplet and the pillars, and understanding how pillars can be used to suppress the splashing of impacting droplets.”