Revealed: How To Carry Your Coffee To Avoid Spillages According To Science
Nobody likes spilling their coffee, but scientists have now come up with the best way to stop it happening.
Switching the way you hold your cup to using the ‘claw hand’ grip is the key to stopping your brew sloshing over the side of the cup when you walk, according to their findings.
It’s either that, or walking backwards, according to the experts, who have published their findings in the journal Achievements in the Life Sciences.
To reach their conclusions, South Korean scientists used equations as well as experiments to analyse why coffee sloshes out of a cup when you walk with it.
They found that the main course of spilling coffee when you walk is ‘resonance’ and limiting that resonance would dramatically decrease the odds of a spillage.
Spillage - the way we walk can up the chances of spilling our drink (Picture: Rex)
Their first suggestion was “to change the way we walk”, saying that walking backwards can change our hand motion and limit the chance of a spill.
But they admit walking backwards may be a less practical way of preventing a coffee spill.
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They said: “A few trials will soon reveal that walking backwards, much more than suppressing resonance, drastically increases the chances of tripping on a stone or crashing into a passing by colleague who may also be walking backwards (this would most definitely lead to spillage).”
According to the scientists, a “more realistic” method is to change the way you hold your cup to what they call the “claw-hand posture” - putting your hand over the top of the cup and holding it by the rim.
Claw hand - holding your cup differently could stop spillages (Picture: Achievements in the Life Sciences)
Carrying your cup in this way would suppress the resonance and so limit spilling, the scientists found.
They also looked at how “adding a foam layer” to your coffee to stop a spill which would basically dampen the resonance and stop the liquid from sloshing out of the cup.
A final suggestion was an alternative cup design to suppress resonance. But until you can buy those, perhaps it’s the claw-hand for now.
New cup - a cup full of cylinders could also limit spills (Picture: Achievements in the Life Sciences)
(Top Picture: Rex)
