How Does The Space Cup Work?

this is the only cup that allows you to drink from an open container in zero g but how does it work and why do we need a special shape to drink without gravity in order to drink from a cup we rely on the fact that gravity is always pulling things down so if we want to take a drink we just have to tip the cup and the liquid pours into our mouth we can drain the whole cup into our mouth just by tipping the cup more and more this is all thanks to gravity but what if there were no gravity well if there's no gravity that means that there's no down or up so when you tilt the cup nothing happens the water doesn't flow into your mouth this is the problem of astronauts on the International Space Station since they're in orbit they're continually in zero g but if they have this cup then it's no longer a problem the liquid will climb up the pointy end of the cup and be ready to take a sip we often take for granted how almost every fluid system we use would completely fail in space for example the sink works because drops fall and Bubbles rise without this we wouldn't have a working drain all the pipes lead out of your house simply because they're flowing downhill and gravity pulls the liquid away so without gravity everything becomes much more complicated take the toilet for example on earth a toilet costs a few hundred but in Space the current ISS toilet cost $19 million this is because of all the necessary functions to get waste from your body to a storage container without gravity so recently now mass of scientists and astronauts have been coming up with some really cool designs that achieve some of the results without expensive equipment usually on the ISS because of the no gravity problem astronauts drink from a bag with a straw this works but drinking from a straw gets old after a while it's a different experience to drink a sip through a straw versus a cup when we suck it through the straw we don't get the smell of the drink next to our nose so we miss out on some of the flavor so how does this new space cup work well it relies on the surface tension and cohesion of the liquid to the cup walls normally in order to pull the liquid up the cracks or holes need to be very small for example a paper towel works because of tiny little spaces in between the fibers and in this capillary tube here you can see how high the liquid rests naturally depending on the tube size but if you aren't fighting against gravity you don't need a tiny crack or a hole you just need a slightly pointy section so since this side of the cup has this sharp crevice the liquid will naturally climb up the crack but notice it isn't doing it now that's because it has to fight against gravity right now if we take the Gravity Force away then we should be able to see the water climb up the crack so how do we turn off gravity well we do it the same way the ISS does we just drop it when something is in freef Fall the Gravity Force drops to zero that's literally why the ISS doesn't fill gravity because they're in free fall as well they're just moving really fast sideways so they never hit the earth they just fall around it so let's drop our cup and see if we can see the liquid climate 2 3 [Music] drop whoa it worked so in this case the water actually climbed out of the cup but if we had a longer time then the surface tension of the water would have pulled it back into the cup with dropping we can only see it for a short time but you can see the cup in action in this video here with a real astronaut in space it's so cool so now we have cups that work in space if you want to read more about the space cup but don't have time to sit down and read a technical paper then you should try my new favorite app that can read technical papers called listening I read a lot of research papers but I'm also on the go a lot so I use listening to be able to listen to the technical papers when I can't read them the present invention provides a beverage cup listening is specifically made for technical papers so it's able to read math equations and even tables it knows how to pronounce technical terms that would normally be difficult for an AI voice a CQ to the power of 17 yielded hypertrophic aoid shapes with gbp2 expression and you can even choose from whatever type of voice you want to listen to it breaks up the papers into digestible chapters for you and you can even add notes you can upload PDFs of the papers you want to read or just put a link to the website you can use it as an app or a website so if you want to save time by listening to good research on the go then go to listening. comom or click the link in my description and try it out for free now and thanks for watching another episode of the action lab I hope you learned something if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet remember to hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next time

Channel: The Action Lab

Views: 623,083

Keywords: international space station, space cup, capillary beverage experiment, the action lab, capillary cup

Id: PhSQnIrQIOg

Length: 4min 58sec (298 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2024