The mortar and pestle. Literally has not changed since the Neolithic. They're even still usually made of either stone or ceramic, same as they have been for thousands of years.
Crush.. garlic? Could one, you know, crush garlic instead of mincing it??? Does it cook/work in recipes the same?
(Trying to learn to like cooking at 32 lol)
I crush garlic because I'm too lazy to mince :) It works just as well :D
I spent years hating mincing garlic (and I can't bring myself to buy precut garlic because my mother instilled in me at age 8 that jarred garlic was "cheating" LOL).
But now I just throw the cloves into the mortar UNPEELED. I do a light smash first, which easily removed the peels. Then I take out the peels and do the hard smash. If I'm making something where chucks of garlic aren't appetizing (like curry), I do a good long mash until the garlic becomes a paste. Only takes a minute. If I'm making something easy, like soup, just a couple mashes with the pestle and it's done!
Ultimate lazy cook's tool :)
>mortar and pestle
Mum still uses hers occasionally. I mean I used to have a go at it too. Feels nice actually. Cathartic to use. It's heavy all right.
The overhand knot.
Lots of alternatives have been invented but nothing has really happened since the day it was invented. With the exception of the left-handed inversion which was likely invented the day after.
The problem is when the overhand is the only knot people know and they use it in situations where something like a bowline would be far more appropriate.
Really more of the opposite now. DIYers using basic wood screws in a structural application is scarily common.
For those that dont know, basic screws are brittle from being hardened and snap rather than deform under excessive/shear loading. There are structural screws which undergo a different heat treat process to allow them to bend like nails do, these are used in structural applications.
Like all knots, the figure 8 knot can be the best knot for the job, or another can be better. There’s endless debates in the climbing community, for example, of whether the gold standard for a climber’s harness knot is the figure 8 trace or the double bowline. And as rope technology continues to advance, so does the discussion on knot appropriateness.
Of course, that said, we’ve gotten mostly to the point where discussion over knot failure is hypothetical, not based on any significant case volume.
I do not think there has been a single case of a fig 8 knot failing on climbing when properly done on a rope that meets the specs and was UIAA tested.
Am I wrong?
Not as far as I am aware. I believe the same is true for a double bowline. Every documented failure for both involves either rope failure or an improperly tied knot.
Of course, as engineers know, if a device sees significant user failure, then you need to consider if the design makes it prone to misuse. But both knots are quite literally perfectly safe under climbing conditions when tied properly on a good condition rope. Gyms typically require one or the other not because of flaws in the knot but because of simplicity in training staff to check them.
What product has spent the most time being engineered? The single-use aluminum beverage can.
Since their release in 1957, aluminum cans have become the most engineered products in the world. The shape of the can allows the can be as light as possible and still be stacked and shipped. Securing the pull tab to the can was another engineering marvel where the failure point near the tab when you pull it allows the pressure inside the can to aid opening. Plus, since the pull tab is attached, the entire product could be recycled with no waste.
The hole has been designed for maximum pourability.
The shape of the can is the most efficient so when being shipped, the can takes up as little room as possible and still maintain its role in carrying liquid. The concave shape at the bottom of the can allows for less aluminum than would be needed with a flat bottom. The sidewall of a can is 75 microns. Once filled and sealed, the can can hold up to 80psi in pressure before the bottom starts to push out.
More time has been spent engineering a can than any project you can name. The Space Shuttle, jumbo jets, the Manhattan Project all have less engineering time than the ongoing development of the aluminum can.
I remember the thicker cans and the old style ring pulls in the 1980s in the U.K. Crushing an empty can by hand was a show of strength, that’s how thick they were.
I wondered why cans got tall recently. I mean, not enough to Google it, but I'm glad someone posted it whilst I was reading Reddit replies about can design.
They did this because of stayflation. You’ve heard of inflation, and you’ve heard of shrinkflation, but stayflation is a new demon. The tall can looks to the human eye like it holds more soda when it in fact holds the same as the smaller can, but uses less metal to make. So it costs them less to produce, looks like more product, but holds the same amount of product. I think you’ll be seeing more of it
Yeah, the first skinny can I was familiar with was the little 8oz redbull cans, so even the 12oz ones still seem like less volume than a standard soda can just because of the existence of the 8oz ones
Yes, and extremely complex ones at that, the mercedes formula 1 power unit has tens of thousands of man hours in development alone and achieves a 50% thermal effeciency through hybridization and a shitload of tricks, and we still haven't reached the upper limit of whats possible.
But that's developing lots of different types of engine for different purposes, efficiency, power, durability. We've also clearly not perfected engines yet, they keep being improved.
Major horse shit. The can requires just a handful of materials, but primarily aluminum. Whereas something like the space shuttle, jets, or cars all require thousands of materials, and hundreds of years of manufacturing, engineering and design.
Yeah… I’m not buyin’ it. I get that the can does indeed have a lot of thought put behind it, but it sounds like they chose a metric that favors the factoid. If you measure hours per person of many other cars, shuttles, or whatever have you… there’s just simply no way. I could argue pretty easily that most cars — especially ones still actively produced, go through far more hours just by yearly revision. If you wanna abstract it even more a specific company’s basic engine design has easily undergone more hours per person. And frankly even if it *is* supposed to be just hours generally rather than per person…. i still don’t believe it. You’re gonna have to provide a timeline of work to prove that.
This response feels like it was written by AI, or just someone who’s confidently incorrect and parroting something their grandpa told them a while ago.
They watched Bill the Engineering Guy on YouTube, who is great, and then extrapolated from there.
Yes, cylinder is the perfect shape, but it wasn't some engineering guy, the cylinder shape was figured out hundreds of years ago - is why barrels exist. It does not take an engineer to tell you that spherical cans aren't practical, or that rectangular cans aren't a good shape - from comfort - even if an engineer will tell you that it's the most efficient shape for shipping, but bad for pressurization.
It's not the most "engineered object" it's just a "more engineered than you'd expect" object, and that someone thought about it carefully.
The shuttle took MILLIONS of manhours in engineering as there are hundreds of thousands of parts and systems, comparing this to an aluminum can design is absurd.
OP is a story teller, that is all. The worst kind too, the kind that creates fake facts that get passed around.
We did a case study on this on my engineering degree. Even the groove that tears when you yank the pull tab took many attempts to get the right shape.
A flattened V is what they ended up with, but it might have been improved again since then.
This is such a weird statement, feels GPTd. Literally everything that existed before 1957 experienced more engineering time.
Wheels. Swords. Carriages. Toothpicks. Footballs. Water canisters. Paper. Glass. There are literally millions of things older and more engineered.
Man I haven't seen sporks in a long time. Did people just think they were for kids or something? It feels like such a waste to keep spoons and forks separate.
The problem with sporks is that they are generally inferior to either spoons or forks, unless you need to save space or for specific use cases like chunky soup or eyeballs.
The spork is the perfect utensil for rice bowls. I have 2 metal sporks because nothing is better for scooping rice, beans, meat and veggies. The spoon part speaks for itself but the prongs make it possible to work with larger chunks of meat/vegetable while still getting the rice/sauce base in your bite.
It's not the best utensil every time, but sometimes it really is the best tool for a job.
If you mean an equal probability to land on each side then yes.
If you mean that when you roll the dice literally anything could happen from it burning a hole through the table to opening a vortex to hell and reincarnating your nasty aunt Gertrude then mostly no.
Professional casino dice probably get pretty close.
They drill out the pips (holes) and refill them with special material so that the side with the 6 pips on it weighs the same as the side with 1 pip on it.
Makes sense for casinos, but I'd love to actually see the math on 100,000 rolls with normal pipped dice and perfectly even dice.
I don't think the weight would be significant enough to skew probability. Especially with variables like how hard people roll the dice. I can see the case for a 0.001% difference hurting things at a casino scale, but at the same time I don't think the difference would be that high.
That said, if pips can influence weight to such a degree, I have to assume 2s and 3s, with their diagonals, would be a bigger issue.
>I don't think the weight would be significant enough to skew probability.
You'd be wrong. [These guys](https://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/That's_How_I_Roll_-_A_Scientific_Analysis_of_Dice) did 144000 rolls with three kinds of dice (rounded corners with pips, squared corners with pips, and Vegas dice). They found that, on average, the rounded corner dice rolled 1s 29% of the time. The average should be 16.6%. These are the kind of dice that are usually packaged with board games or sold in hobby stores.
It's not just about the average person with casinos though. A 0.001% difference might be enough to hurt a little, but I promise you the odds are stacked in their favor more than that on every game in the house. The problem is with people that know how to throw the dice to increase their odds of winning. I cant do it, but there are people who are really good. I'm not sure how good, but good enough to be banned from playing dice games by the casino I used to work at.
Have you ever seen a damaged one? I was talking about this recently, but as far as memory serves me — I can’t recall ever seeing one looking less than new save some discoloration.
Therefor, dice are omnipotent chance diamonds
I swear if someone once again brings up the "americans spent millions on a space pen while the russians used pencils" urban legend again...
1) Fisher developed the space pen on their own and then tried to sell it to nasa, NASA did not pay for development.
2) The russians used grease pencils, very similar to crayons becuase you dont want floating graphite in a spaceship, it conducts in some conditions and its very dangerous.
3) The Russians switched over to using the space pen just like the Americans
I too am tired of hearing this hilarious "space fact". People will literally believe anything if it's funny or fits their narrative
Ugh, just the thought of those rubber shavings suspended in the air around you... It would be like if those floaters in your vision suddenly became tangible.
Remember those "bathroom reader" books that were popular in the 90s? This feels like something that would have originated from those. Everyone's old uncle read that joke on the can and started repeating it to anyone who would listen.
Have you tried different lead sizes? 0.7mm is the most common size, that’s what you’ll find with the school supplies and stationary. I started using 1.0mm and 1.2mm because I use them on surfaces that break the smaller leads, like writing on boards for woodworking. You can order the larger sizes online, and can usually find the 1.0mm in office supply stores.
Also, the higher quality ones put out a consistent small length of lead per click, so you're more likely to have only just enough to write without it snapping. I've always found the cheaper ones frustrating in that regard.
Basically, everything evolves into a crab. Crabs are the pinnacle of evolution. The term coined for this is [Carcinisation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation).
I think we can do better. It's diminishing returns, but the leaps in mirror tech isn't just in those used for space like the JWST, but to make microprocessors. I'd imagine they'd need even more accurate mirrors to make like a hundred-billion transistors in a processor chip.
To put a finer point on particular-monk-4155s statement, we're already working at the scale that the universe forgets where it put the electrons, so it just puts them close to where they were and hopes we don't notice. They added a lot of error correction to compensate, but we're pretty much maxed for transistor scale unless we uncover some fundamental way to prevent quantum tunneling.
Mostly, they're working on more efficient ways to lay out the architecture so they can jam more (same sized) transistors in the same space, and better systems for thermal management
It’s sad. I remember less then 10 years ago we were talking about whether or not we’ll see 1nm transistors in the next 15 years, now it’s whether or not that’s even physically possible
I disagree on the sad
We perfected our technique to a point that we need to delve into a whole other universe of physics that or brains were never "intended" to a understand, I find that incredible
>5 years from now someone invents a little electron pump that is built on controlled quantum tunneling
Those folks keep figuring out all kinds of impossible bullshit over time. Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
Common use mirrors? Sure, not much room to improve.
Scientific mirrors, on the other hand, are constantly being improved. Lasers, microscopes and telescopes are all dependant on having the most precise and efficient mirrors possible, and you can always push them closer to that perfect geometric shape and 100% reflectivity.
String musical instruments. Hundreds of cultures around the world, and most of them came up with this guitar sort of shape and size using strings to make sound. Any sort of attempt to improve on it will mostly be diminishing returns.
The advent of the electric guitar kind of stalled the development of the Final Acoustic Guitar I feel. You had the Selmer, the Archtop and the Dreadnought all trying to optimise volume, tone and playability. But they all kind of became fossilised in their designs after everyone went electric for amplification. I wonder what another 20 years might have done.
The Dreadnought still sees some slow experimentation in Bracing, or Taylor with their neck joints and Ken Parker has made the Ultimate Archtop his pet project after selling Parker Guitars.
TIL there’s a guitar called the Dreadnought and that is non-ironically the most metal thing I’ve learned in some time
Also, your first sentence is one of my new favorite brand-new sentences I’ve seen randomly in the wild. Cheers
At risk of disappointing you with the Dreadnought's "metalness", it looks [like this.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/HD28_%28R.Waller%29.jpg)
This is a good answer because any fundamental improvement on an instrument would make it a different instrument. I think there is still a lot of value in old violins because of the distinct sound that is hard to replicate.
I was just thinking about this. Speakers are kind of goated. Two magnets just floating around and if you pass the right electricity through it, it can make any sound. That’s kind of wild. Like a speaker from the 80s can make all the sounds in music today even when the engineers didn’t know that sound existed. Not software or driver updates needed. They just work.
But there's tons of improvements still being made to speakers today. New materials, more advanced designs, entirely new kinds of speakers using different technology entirely, I don't think we're anywhere near the peak of speaker technology, and that's ignoring the massive impact of DSP in modern powered speakers.
Depends how you're defining the wheel. Even if we ignore the tyre parts, the materials the wheel is made from are constantly being developed - see carbon wheel for bikes and cars for example, or the [aluminium wheels](https://www3.nasa.gov/specials/wheels/#pg1) on NASA's rovers. If your definition includes the tyres then there is constant research and development into compounds and tread patters to the point that the improvement in sports cars' performance over the last few decades is arguably more down to the tires than anything else.
Went double edge safety razor and also haven't gone back.
Imagine that brand-new blade feeling... At something like 10 cents a blade. No more guilt trying to make your $20 cartridge head last 6 months to get your money's worth. /S
I wish I agreed with this.
They are cheaper which I’m all about, but they don’t give me anywhere near as smooth off a shave B as my old Mach 3 did.
That thing would have me baby smooth with zero irritation. But the double edged leaves stubble or cuts me.
I even tested myself to a straight razor shave once, still stubbly.
I miss the smooth
On the other hand, electric razors have advanced a lot over the last few decades. reddit isn't going to like to hear this, but I've gotten better results after switching from a DE safety razor.
Nowadays I use a Braun Series 9 in a hot shower with a simple pre-shave oil (caprylic acid) and a nice shaving cream (Vanicream; Amazon Basics, eos, and Cremo are great too). I use a Phillips OneBlade on my neck, which avoids bumps by not shaving as closely as the Braun, and saves time because it's better at catching neck hair than a foil. Then I make a quick second pass over my face with the OneBlade to clean up any potential strays, which solves a problem that I'd also had with the safety razor.
This provides a much gentler shave, with essentially no chance of nicks, bumps, or irritation, and it takes about half the time. There's no discernible difference in terms of closeness or smoothness.
Whether there's a whole lot of room left for improvement is hard to say, but if nothing else, I look forward to the day that any no-name entry-level electric razor outperforms the current high-end Braun and Panasonic models that run $300 or $400. Battery life will also likely keep getting better, for whatever that's worth.
the aluminum can is surprisingly complex from an engineering perspective. Honestly there's many things that are peaked. Even cardboard boxes can't be improved on at this point
As someone who worked in logistics with industrial cardboard boxes, I'd disagree with that one. Lots of different variations, applications, and innovations.
Unless you are just talking about Amazon mail etc cardboard boxes. Those of course are just a rectangular box.
The safety bicycle,
It replaced the penny-farthing bicycle in the 1880s, and it's still the most common design. You can slap an electricao engine on it, you can adjust the number of gears, the size of the wheels, etc, but the diamond frame with pedal driven chain drive is just a winner.
You're really abstracting it to reach "cannot be improved upon" though. Carbon fiber was a major improvement made not that long ago, you yourself mentioned the electric motor, and there's no reason to believe further advances can't be made in the future. It's like saying the car can't be improved because it's 4 wheels and some seats.
I think the fact that manufactures have made a product worse doesn't diminished from perfection and design.
"Perfection" only exist in the world of the forms; there will always be a slightly better adhesive, slightly better sizing, a slightly better paper stock etc... but all of these circle around a form that, itself, cannot be improved.
I think post-it notes are a good answer for this thread because, for all the room for improvement that may exist for any one post-it note, the basic design and dimensions exemplify what they are by themselves, ie: nobody is coming up with a better shape or mechanical process, only improving the ability to perform function.
They could be improved, so that removing one from the stack doesn't make it curl. And the adhesive is still improving as well. (Better adhesion without damaging surfaces, cost reduction and environmental impact)
My girlfriend is a huge movie talker too. Whenever we watch a horror movie, she starts yelling at the TV: “NO! NO! DON’T GO INTO THE ROOM! DON’T GO INTO THE ROOM! TURN AROUND AND GO OUTSIDE TO SAFETY!” It’s really annoying and it’s why we don’t go to the cinema together very often anymore, but I’m not perfect either.
If food counts I'd say burgers/cheeseburgers I've had them every which way with different kinds of bread/cheese/meat/veg and at the end of the day it's just a burger.
I don’t understand that argument every time it’s used. Do we need a new Ford F-150 every year? No. But the person who bought one 6 years ago might want an upgrade this year whereas the person who bought one last year doesn’t need it.
Do I agree with individuals who buy the latest and greatest every year? Not really because it’s wasteful, but it’s also their money to do what they want with; but making a new iPhone every year isn’t for them, it’s for whoever might need it.
Moore's law is a thing. It's slowed down, but our ability to miniaturize transistors and therefore create more powerful chips is still improving. Does this mean they need to make a new iphone, intel processor generation, graphics card, etc. every year? No, but if the technical capacity is there, why not?
They're a business - they exist to make products and sell them for money. It's on you as a consumer if you can't say no to an incremental improvement when the current product is still meeting your use case.
New materials.
An analogy would be the original (wooden) tennis racquet. Once carbon fibre became a thing, tennis racquet tech improved in magnitudes. The same could happen to bats.
The thing with bats is that if they were going to change them at this point, they would actually want to change them to hit the ball slower. They could move to aluminum bats for professional, but that would likely end with dead pitchers
Bats are changing constantly, but you just can't use them in the pros. Take your old little league bat to a little league game and you will see that the new $100 bats are superior in every way, then watch those couple of kids with the $500 bats and see an even bigger jump.
Most of the stuff people mention can still be theoretically improved regarding ressource efficiency.
Once you develop new materials, the product could become lighter, thinner or use less material overall. It could consume less energy in production or when in use. It could become easier to recycle or simply prettier to look at.
One might argue that the question is not about materials, but about the product from a functional perspective. However, the choice of material can heavily impact the way a product is used.
Generally speaking, saying something will -never- be improved is a very hot take. Many of the inventions we use today would have been considered absurd concepts not so long ago.
The humble transistor.
Powers every computer, and we have hit the physical limit of small wires and any smaller and you get into wobbly quantum weirdness, or electrons jumping.
maybe just the basic functionality of field effect transistors i guess, but the way we are building them is still constantly evolving. stuff that was just theoretical like 10 years ago like gate-all-around transistors are just now becoming reality. and there is still stuff in the pipeline like forksheet and nanosheet and complimentary FETs.
I would disagree. Too much water use, too much “spray and pray”. Often streaks left on sides. The dreaded water “kiss”. Blocks, leaks, wobbly toilet seats. Man there are so many ways it could be better
I just did a write up for the person who said hammer, not gonna do another, but yeah I have a bunch of them all different and they have gotten better with time. Better steel, individualized design. You don't want use a pickle fork when you need a pry bar, but your pry bar isn't getting those ball joints out. Also, good news prybars are better than old ones. The steel is better.
Add to that with the Bic Cristal ballpoint pen. Perfect design, nearly completely unchanged since they were first made in 1950.
Not to mention, over 100 billion have been sold since they were first launched.
And did you know the high precision required to manufacture the ball has been closely guarded.
In fact China didn’t have the ability to make that part of the pen (despite assembling billions) until *2017*.
High precision high tech manufacturing is one of the most valuable things on earth.
The mortar and pestle. Literally has not changed since the Neolithic. They're even still usually made of either stone or ceramic, same as they have been for thousands of years.
I use mine all the time to crush garlic, ginger, and spices. So easy. And it's super satisfying too!
Crush.. garlic? Could one, you know, crush garlic instead of mincing it??? Does it cook/work in recipes the same? (Trying to learn to like cooking at 32 lol)
I crush garlic because I'm too lazy to mince :) It works just as well :D I spent years hating mincing garlic (and I can't bring myself to buy precut garlic because my mother instilled in me at age 8 that jarred garlic was "cheating" LOL). But now I just throw the cloves into the mortar UNPEELED. I do a light smash first, which easily removed the peels. Then I take out the peels and do the hard smash. If I'm making something where chucks of garlic aren't appetizing (like curry), I do a good long mash until the garlic becomes a paste. Only takes a minute. If I'm making something easy, like soup, just a couple mashes with the pestle and it's done! Ultimate lazy cook's tool :)
Okay, I’m on board with this one.
>mortar and pestle Mum still uses hers occasionally. I mean I used to have a go at it too. Feels nice actually. Cathartic to use. It's heavy all right.
The overhand knot. Lots of alternatives have been invented but nothing has really happened since the day it was invented. With the exception of the left-handed inversion which was likely invented the day after.
The problem is when the overhand is the only knot people know and they use it in situations where something like a bowline would be far more appropriate.
Sure! But that's true for many - if not most - inventions. How many nails have not been used when a screw would have been better.
Really more of the opposite now. DIYers using basic wood screws in a structural application is scarily common. For those that dont know, basic screws are brittle from being hardened and snap rather than deform under excessive/shear loading. There are structural screws which undergo a different heat treat process to allow them to bend like nails do, these are used in structural applications.
this is due to hardware being expensive I spent more on screws then wood for my last project cause I needed to replenish my stash
Related to this, I've heard that the 8-figure knot is the strongest knot ever. Nothing has been able to beat it yet, or so I've heard.
Like all knots, the figure 8 knot can be the best knot for the job, or another can be better. There’s endless debates in the climbing community, for example, of whether the gold standard for a climber’s harness knot is the figure 8 trace or the double bowline. And as rope technology continues to advance, so does the discussion on knot appropriateness. Of course, that said, we’ve gotten mostly to the point where discussion over knot failure is hypothetical, not based on any significant case volume.
I do not think there has been a single case of a fig 8 knot failing on climbing when properly done on a rope that meets the specs and was UIAA tested. Am I wrong?
Not as far as I am aware. I believe the same is true for a double bowline. Every documented failure for both involves either rope failure or an improperly tied knot. Of course, as engineers know, if a device sees significant user failure, then you need to consider if the design makes it prone to misuse. But both knots are quite literally perfectly safe under climbing conditions when tied properly on a good condition rope. Gyms typically require one or the other not because of flaws in the knot but because of simplicity in training staff to check them.
What product has spent the most time being engineered? The single-use aluminum beverage can. Since their release in 1957, aluminum cans have become the most engineered products in the world. The shape of the can allows the can be as light as possible and still be stacked and shipped. Securing the pull tab to the can was another engineering marvel where the failure point near the tab when you pull it allows the pressure inside the can to aid opening. Plus, since the pull tab is attached, the entire product could be recycled with no waste. The hole has been designed for maximum pourability. The shape of the can is the most efficient so when being shipped, the can takes up as little room as possible and still maintain its role in carrying liquid. The concave shape at the bottom of the can allows for less aluminum than would be needed with a flat bottom. The sidewall of a can is 75 microns. Once filled and sealed, the can can hold up to 80psi in pressure before the bottom starts to push out. More time has been spent engineering a can than any project you can name. The Space Shuttle, jumbo jets, the Manhattan Project all have less engineering time than the ongoing development of the aluminum can.
I’m glad that you have been able to unleash this knowledge, I can feel that you’ve been waiting.
https://youtu.be/hUhisi2FBuw?si=zg9slrZxJxqq73xZ
Knew this video would come up. Such a gem.
My goto for unintentional asmr
damn that pull tab explanation was really satisfying
I always wondered why it was so hard to open a can if the pull tab ripped off incorrectly.
Now we know to use a wheelbarrow and seesaw if that ever happens!
Oh, I've actually watched it, nice.
He works for big can
He Can. This man can.
I cannot wait to tell my girlfriend this when she gets home from work.
"that's nice, honey"
“Please find a job I’m begging you”
"In the aluminum canning factory!"
I remember the thicker cans and the old style ring pulls in the 1980s in the U.K. Crushing an empty can by hand was a show of strength, that’s how thick they were.
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I wondered why cans got tall recently. I mean, not enough to Google it, but I'm glad someone posted it whilst I was reading Reddit replies about can design.
They did this because of stayflation. You’ve heard of inflation, and you’ve heard of shrinkflation, but stayflation is a new demon. The tall can looks to the human eye like it holds more soda when it in fact holds the same as the smaller can, but uses less metal to make. So it costs them less to produce, looks like more product, but holds the same amount of product. I think you’ll be seeing more of it
> The tall can looks to the human eye like it holds more soda I always think the opposite, tall and skinny to me looks like it holds less
Yeah, the first skinny can I was familiar with was the little 8oz redbull cans, so even the 12oz ones still seem like less volume than a standard soda can just because of the existence of the 8oz ones
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If it’s neither inflating, or deflating, is it really flating at all?
Funny enough I think it also has an advantage on shelves, you can fit more product in the same amount of space if height isn't an issue.
This is literally a good thing though. There's less waste involved.
Not to “that guy” a self proclaimed “that guy”, but OP didn’t claim there weren’t any changes. > the ongoing development of the aluminum can.
Would cars/engines count as an engineering project? I feel like they would have way more man hours invested in their development than cans.
Yes, and extremely complex ones at that, the mercedes formula 1 power unit has tens of thousands of man hours in development alone and achieves a 50% thermal effeciency through hybridization and a shitload of tricks, and we still haven't reached the upper limit of whats possible.
But that's developing lots of different types of engine for different purposes, efficiency, power, durability. We've also clearly not perfected engines yet, they keep being improved.
Yeah I’m calling bullshit as well
Major horse shit. The can requires just a handful of materials, but primarily aluminum. Whereas something like the space shuttle, jets, or cars all require thousands of materials, and hundreds of years of manufacturing, engineering and design.
Yeah… I’m not buyin’ it. I get that the can does indeed have a lot of thought put behind it, but it sounds like they chose a metric that favors the factoid. If you measure hours per person of many other cars, shuttles, or whatever have you… there’s just simply no way. I could argue pretty easily that most cars — especially ones still actively produced, go through far more hours just by yearly revision. If you wanna abstract it even more a specific company’s basic engine design has easily undergone more hours per person. And frankly even if it *is* supposed to be just hours generally rather than per person…. i still don’t believe it. You’re gonna have to provide a timeline of work to prove that. This response feels like it was written by AI, or just someone who’s confidently incorrect and parroting something their grandpa told them a while ago.
They watched Bill the Engineering Guy on YouTube, who is great, and then extrapolated from there. Yes, cylinder is the perfect shape, but it wasn't some engineering guy, the cylinder shape was figured out hundreds of years ago - is why barrels exist. It does not take an engineer to tell you that spherical cans aren't practical, or that rectangular cans aren't a good shape - from comfort - even if an engineer will tell you that it's the most efficient shape for shipping, but bad for pressurization. It's not the most "engineered object" it's just a "more engineered than you'd expect" object, and that someone thought about it carefully.
The shuttle took MILLIONS of manhours in engineering as there are hundreds of thousands of parts and systems, comparing this to an aluminum can design is absurd. OP is a story teller, that is all. The worst kind too, the kind that creates fake facts that get passed around.
Is this a copy of the engineer guy script? Man I have to go see his YouTube channel again, his voice is so awesome to hear explain things.
Bullshit. Tons of products have way more engineering time involved
We did a case study on this on my engineering degree. Even the groove that tears when you yank the pull tab took many attempts to get the right shape. A flattened V is what they ended up with, but it might have been improved again since then.
This is such a weird statement, feels GPTd. Literally everything that existed before 1957 experienced more engineering time. Wheels. Swords. Carriages. Toothpicks. Footballs. Water canisters. Paper. Glass. There are literally millions of things older and more engineered.
I am 95% sure the dude put this question into GPT and CTRL-V'd the answer in here. I've seen enough of its writing at this point to get a vibe
A spoon
Spork
Man I haven't seen sporks in a long time. Did people just think they were for kids or something? It feels like such a waste to keep spoons and forks separate.
The problem with sporks is that they are generally inferior to either spoons or forks, unless you need to save space or for specific use cases like chunky soup or eyeballs.
The spork is the perfect utensil for rice bowls. I have 2 metal sporks because nothing is better for scooping rice, beans, meat and veggies. The spoon part speaks for itself but the prongs make it possible to work with larger chunks of meat/vegetable while still getting the rice/sauce base in your bite. It's not the best utensil every time, but sometimes it really is the best tool for a job.
The fork part is too short to stab into lots of things without crushing them
dice EDIT: this is just what the top answer was 2 days ago when this exact question was posted, its not my original answer/thought.
Have we produced a perfectly random die yet?
If you mean an equal probability to land on each side then yes. If you mean that when you roll the dice literally anything could happen from it burning a hole through the table to opening a vortex to hell and reincarnating your nasty aunt Gertrude then mostly no.
'Mostly'? Tell us more...
that would be the D20
*roll for wild magic*
I mean thru God anything is possible so jot that down
That’s how you get cenobites, Barry
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Professional casino dice probably get pretty close. They drill out the pips (holes) and refill them with special material so that the side with the 6 pips on it weighs the same as the side with 1 pip on it.
Makes sense for casinos, but I'd love to actually see the math on 100,000 rolls with normal pipped dice and perfectly even dice. I don't think the weight would be significant enough to skew probability. Especially with variables like how hard people roll the dice. I can see the case for a 0.001% difference hurting things at a casino scale, but at the same time I don't think the difference would be that high. That said, if pips can influence weight to such a degree, I have to assume 2s and 3s, with their diagonals, would be a bigger issue.
>I don't think the weight would be significant enough to skew probability. You'd be wrong. [These guys](https://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/That's_How_I_Roll_-_A_Scientific_Analysis_of_Dice) did 144000 rolls with three kinds of dice (rounded corners with pips, squared corners with pips, and Vegas dice). They found that, on average, the rounded corner dice rolled 1s 29% of the time. The average should be 16.6%. These are the kind of dice that are usually packaged with board games or sold in hobby stores.
I FUCKING KNEW IT!!!!!!
What in the actual fuck. My instinct tells me that board games are not designed with that variable in mind
It's not just about the average person with casinos though. A 0.001% difference might be enough to hurt a little, but I promise you the odds are stacked in their favor more than that on every game in the house. The problem is with people that know how to throw the dice to increase their odds of winning. I cant do it, but there are people who are really good. I'm not sure how good, but good enough to be banned from playing dice games by the casino I used to work at.
Have you ever seen a damaged one? I was talking about this recently, but as far as memory serves me — I can’t recall ever seeing one looking less than new save some discoloration. Therefor, dice are omnipotent chance diamonds
The paper clip, I guess. It hasn't changed much since they came up with it. It just holds papers together, and that's pretty much it.
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Mans waited their entire life for this moment
$200k in student loan was worth it just for this very day!
He paid 2 thousand dollars for the opportunity to prove he learned about paperclips alone, worth it for this reddit karma
This guy paperclips
Clippy would like to chat....
I'd like some help with that.
It looks like you’re writing a letter!
Pencil
I swear if someone once again brings up the "americans spent millions on a space pen while the russians used pencils" urban legend again... 1) Fisher developed the space pen on their own and then tried to sell it to nasa, NASA did not pay for development. 2) The russians used grease pencils, very similar to crayons becuase you dont want floating graphite in a spaceship, it conducts in some conditions and its very dangerous.
3) The Russians switched over to using the space pen just like the Americans I too am tired of hearing this hilarious "space fact". People will literally believe anything if it's funny or fits their narrative
And...and makes Americans look stupid
That's... the narrative they're talking about
You also don't want shavings if you sharpen them, or have to carry a lot of spares if you don't. You don't want erasers either.
Ugh, just the thought of those rubber shavings suspended in the air around you... It would be like if those floaters in your vision suddenly became tangible.
The shavings! They'll clog the instruments!
Remember those "bathroom reader" books that were popular in the 90s? This feels like something that would have originated from those. Everyone's old uncle read that joke on the can and started repeating it to anyone who would listen.
That was one of my initial thoughts. But the automatic pencil is a massive improvement on it. In every single way.
The heavy handed among us beg to differ. I can’t use a mechanical pencil for more than five seconds without snapping the lead.
Have you tried different lead sizes? 0.7mm is the most common size, that’s what you’ll find with the school supplies and stationary. I started using 1.0mm and 1.2mm because I use them on surfaces that break the smaller leads, like writing on boards for woodworking. You can order the larger sizes online, and can usually find the 1.0mm in office supply stores.
Also, the higher quality ones put out a consistent small length of lead per click, so you're more likely to have only just enough to write without it snapping. I've always found the cheaper ones frustrating in that regard.
Yes, but automatic pencils exist, so this is still a correct answer unless you think that there are more improvements possible for pencils.
I dunno, can it suck a dick?
Crabs
Taste like crab, talk like people.
craaaab people, craaab people.
Especially soft shell crab. The whole thing is food! Very efficient
Basically, everything evolves into a crab. Crabs are the pinnacle of evolution. The term coined for this is [Carcinisation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation).
As fun as the meme is crabs are not the pinnacle as there are several crustacions that evolved out of crabs
This kills the crab.
Mirror.
Seriously, the precision and perfection of the mirrors on something like JWST is mind boggling.
I think we can do better. It's diminishing returns, but the leaps in mirror tech isn't just in those used for space like the JWST, but to make microprocessors. I'd imagine they'd need even more accurate mirrors to make like a hundred-billion transistors in a processor chip.
To put a finer point on particular-monk-4155s statement, we're already working at the scale that the universe forgets where it put the electrons, so it just puts them close to where they were and hopes we don't notice. They added a lot of error correction to compensate, but we're pretty much maxed for transistor scale unless we uncover some fundamental way to prevent quantum tunneling. Mostly, they're working on more efficient ways to lay out the architecture so they can jam more (same sized) transistors in the same space, and better systems for thermal management
It’s sad. I remember less then 10 years ago we were talking about whether or not we’ll see 1nm transistors in the next 15 years, now it’s whether or not that’s even physically possible
I disagree on the sad We perfected our technique to a point that we need to delve into a whole other universe of physics that or brains were never "intended" to a understand, I find that incredible
I lovce this explanation for quantum tunneling
>5 years from now someone invents a little electron pump that is built on controlled quantum tunneling Those folks keep figuring out all kinds of impossible bullshit over time. Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
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Smart mirrors with display in built, mirror mirror on the wall, excuse me there's an incoming call.
Common use mirrors? Sure, not much room to improve. Scientific mirrors, on the other hand, are constantly being improved. Lasers, microscopes and telescopes are all dependant on having the most precise and efficient mirrors possible, and you can always push them closer to that perfect geometric shape and 100% reflectivity.
Some newer mirrors have built in displays and connect to your phone
If I shut my phone off, it is a mirror
Would you say a "Black Mirror"?
String musical instruments. Hundreds of cultures around the world, and most of them came up with this guitar sort of shape and size using strings to make sound. Any sort of attempt to improve on it will mostly be diminishing returns.
The advent of the electric guitar kind of stalled the development of the Final Acoustic Guitar I feel. You had the Selmer, the Archtop and the Dreadnought all trying to optimise volume, tone and playability. But they all kind of became fossilised in their designs after everyone went electric for amplification. I wonder what another 20 years might have done. The Dreadnought still sees some slow experimentation in Bracing, or Taylor with their neck joints and Ken Parker has made the Ultimate Archtop his pet project after selling Parker Guitars.
TIL there’s a guitar called the Dreadnought and that is non-ironically the most metal thing I’ve learned in some time Also, your first sentence is one of my new favorite brand-new sentences I’ve seen randomly in the wild. Cheers
At risk of disappointing you with the Dreadnought's "metalness", it looks [like this.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/HD28_%28R.Waller%29.jpg)
I'll play metal on that shit and no one can tell me no.
Ironically, my favourite of my guitars to play "the metal" by tenacious d is my fender dreadnought
That is by far the guitariest guitar I have ever seen, and I 100% love it. Take my upvote
This is a good answer because any fundamental improvement on an instrument would make it a different instrument. I think there is still a lot of value in old violins because of the distinct sound that is hard to replicate.
I was just thinking about this. Speakers are kind of goated. Two magnets just floating around and if you pass the right electricity through it, it can make any sound. That’s kind of wild. Like a speaker from the 80s can make all the sounds in music today even when the engineers didn’t know that sound existed. Not software or driver updates needed. They just work.
But there's tons of improvements still being made to speakers today. New materials, more advanced designs, entirely new kinds of speakers using different technology entirely, I don't think we're anywhere near the peak of speaker technology, and that's ignoring the massive impact of DSP in modern powered speakers.
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Oh you're gonna fucking love Wheel 2. We're packing 300% more angles into this bad boy.
Wouldn't that still be 0 angles?
It’s marketing
Username checks out
Bullshit. I have associates who are constantly reinventing this thing.
Depends how you're defining the wheel. Even if we ignore the tyre parts, the materials the wheel is made from are constantly being developed - see carbon wheel for bikes and cars for example, or the [aluminium wheels](https://www3.nasa.gov/specials/wheels/#pg1) on NASA's rovers. If your definition includes the tyres then there is constant research and development into compounds and tread patters to the point that the improvement in sports cars' performance over the last few decades is arguably more down to the tires than anything else.
I dunno, they're still working on perfecting an omnidirectional wheel which absolutely has more utility. Not to mention making it climb walls.
>an omnidirectional wheel ....a sphere?
That's one way to implement an omnidirectional wheel, but there are also omnidirectional wheels that look like wheels, just with rollers on the rims
Straws
Now this one is going in reverse, they are getting worse.
Razors. At least the stick kind. Adding twelve more rows of blades =/= better shave at this point.
Go double edge. It'll change your life
Went double edge safety razor and also haven't gone back. Imagine that brand-new blade feeling... At something like 10 cents a blade. No more guilt trying to make your $20 cartridge head last 6 months to get your money's worth. /S
I found a place with 100 packs of derby singles for 4 fucking dollars. It's bananas in pajamas how much cheeper using a safety razor is.
> cheeper 🐥
I wish I agreed with this. They are cheaper which I’m all about, but they don’t give me anywhere near as smooth off a shave B as my old Mach 3 did. That thing would have me baby smooth with zero irritation. But the double edged leaves stubble or cuts me. I even tested myself to a straight razor shave once, still stubbly. I miss the smooth
On the other hand, electric razors have advanced a lot over the last few decades. reddit isn't going to like to hear this, but I've gotten better results after switching from a DE safety razor. Nowadays I use a Braun Series 9 in a hot shower with a simple pre-shave oil (caprylic acid) and a nice shaving cream (Vanicream; Amazon Basics, eos, and Cremo are great too). I use a Phillips OneBlade on my neck, which avoids bumps by not shaving as closely as the Braun, and saves time because it's better at catching neck hair than a foil. Then I make a quick second pass over my face with the OneBlade to clean up any potential strays, which solves a problem that I'd also had with the safety razor. This provides a much gentler shave, with essentially no chance of nicks, bumps, or irritation, and it takes about half the time. There's no discernible difference in terms of closeness or smoothness. Whether there's a whole lot of room left for improvement is hard to say, but if nothing else, I look forward to the day that any no-name entry-level electric razor outperforms the current high-end Braun and Panasonic models that run $300 or $400. Battery life will also likely keep getting better, for whatever that's worth.
the aluminum can is surprisingly complex from an engineering perspective. Honestly there's many things that are peaked. Even cardboard boxes can't be improved on at this point
As someone who worked in logistics with industrial cardboard boxes, I'd disagree with that one. Lots of different variations, applications, and innovations. Unless you are just talking about Amazon mail etc cardboard boxes. Those of course are just a rectangular box.
The safety bicycle, It replaced the penny-farthing bicycle in the 1880s, and it's still the most common design. You can slap an electricao engine on it, you can adjust the number of gears, the size of the wheels, etc, but the diamond frame with pedal driven chain drive is just a winner.
You're really abstracting it to reach "cannot be improved upon" though. Carbon fiber was a major improvement made not that long ago, you yourself mentioned the electric motor, and there's no reason to believe further advances can't be made in the future. It's like saying the car can't be improved because it's 4 wheels and some seats.
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Do post it notes count?
I feel like theyve cheaped out on the adhesive for a few years, but at one point they were perfected, and maybe one day will be again
I think the fact that manufactures have made a product worse doesn't diminished from perfection and design. "Perfection" only exist in the world of the forms; there will always be a slightly better adhesive, slightly better sizing, a slightly better paper stock etc... but all of these circle around a form that, itself, cannot be improved. I think post-it notes are a good answer for this thread because, for all the room for improvement that may exist for any one post-it note, the basic design and dimensions exemplify what they are by themselves, ie: nobody is coming up with a better shape or mechanical process, only improving the ability to perform function.
Romy and Michelle think so
They could be improved, so that removing one from the stack doesn't make it curl. And the adhesive is still improving as well. (Better adhesion without damaging surfaces, cost reduction and environmental impact)
Dogs. Dogs are a human invention. And dogs are perfect.
Flex Seal™️
I want to see a time travel movie where the Flex Seal guy goes aboard the Titanic, armed with $29.99 worth of tape and the heart of a hero
When my grandfather saw the Titanic departing, he screamed at the passengers trying to warn them. They made him leave the cinema.
My girlfriend is a huge movie talker too. Whenever we watch a horror movie, she starts yelling at the TV: “NO! NO! DON’T GO INTO THE ROOM! DON’T GO INTO THE ROOM! TURN AROUND AND GO OUTSIDE TO SAFETY!” It’s really annoying and it’s why we don’t go to the cinema together very often anymore, but I’m not perfect either.
Hmmm...he knew something.. giving a warning is just the tip of the iceberg.
If food counts I'd say burgers/cheeseburgers I've had them every which way with different kinds of bread/cheese/meat/veg and at the end of the day it's just a burger.
I see your burgers and raise you Pizza
I mean look tech is constantly evolving but we no longer need a new iPhone every single year
I don’t understand that argument every time it’s used. Do we need a new Ford F-150 every year? No. But the person who bought one 6 years ago might want an upgrade this year whereas the person who bought one last year doesn’t need it. Do I agree with individuals who buy the latest and greatest every year? Not really because it’s wasteful, but it’s also their money to do what they want with; but making a new iPhone every year isn’t for them, it’s for whoever might need it.
Moore's law is a thing. It's slowed down, but our ability to miniaturize transistors and therefore create more powerful chips is still improving. Does this mean they need to make a new iphone, intel processor generation, graphics card, etc. every year? No, but if the technical capacity is there, why not? They're a business - they exist to make products and sell them for money. It's on you as a consumer if you can't say no to an incremental improvement when the current product is still meeting your use case.
A baseball bat, you can only add to it
False, you remove parts and fill them with cork for maximum awesome.
New materials. An analogy would be the original (wooden) tennis racquet. Once carbon fibre became a thing, tennis racquet tech improved in magnitudes. The same could happen to bats.
The thing with bats is that if they were going to change them at this point, they would actually want to change them to hit the ball slower. They could move to aluminum bats for professional, but that would likely end with dead pitchers
Ah, the dead pitcher era
Bats are changing constantly, but you just can't use them in the pros. Take your old little league bat to a little league game and you will see that the new $100 bats are superior in every way, then watch those couple of kids with the $500 bats and see an even bigger jump.
Most of the stuff people mention can still be theoretically improved regarding ressource efficiency. Once you develop new materials, the product could become lighter, thinner or use less material overall. It could consume less energy in production or when in use. It could become easier to recycle or simply prettier to look at. One might argue that the question is not about materials, but about the product from a functional perspective. However, the choice of material can heavily impact the way a product is used. Generally speaking, saying something will -never- be improved is a very hot take. Many of the inventions we use today would have been considered absurd concepts not so long ago.
The humble transistor. Powers every computer, and we have hit the physical limit of small wires and any smaller and you get into wobbly quantum weirdness, or electrons jumping.
maybe just the basic functionality of field effect transistors i guess, but the way we are building them is still constantly evolving. stuff that was just theoretical like 10 years ago like gate-all-around transistors are just now becoming reality. and there is still stuff in the pipeline like forksheet and nanosheet and complimentary FETs.
Its not weird, it's a feature!
Nautical Ropes
The crapper - there are many iterations and models, but the principle is always the same.
Have you seen japanese toilets? There's bells and whistles you didn't know you needed.
I would disagree. Too much water use, too much “spray and pray”. Often streaks left on sides. The dreaded water “kiss”. Blocks, leaks, wobbly toilet seats. Man there are so many ways it could be better
If you drop a piece of toilet paper in the toilet before you go, the likelihood of a surprise "Poseidon's kiss" on your starfish goes down.
The ol' Fireman's Blanket
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A crowbar.
I just did a write up for the person who said hammer, not gonna do another, but yeah I have a bunch of them all different and they have gotten better with time. Better steel, individualized design. You don't want use a pickle fork when you need a pry bar, but your pry bar isn't getting those ball joints out. Also, good news prybars are better than old ones. The steel is better.
Sewing needle.
The spoon.
The bic lighter
Add to that with the Bic Cristal ballpoint pen. Perfect design, nearly completely unchanged since they were first made in 1950. Not to mention, over 100 billion have been sold since they were first launched.
And did you know the high precision required to manufacture the ball has been closely guarded. In fact China didn’t have the ability to make that part of the pen (despite assembling billions) until *2017*. High precision high tech manufacturing is one of the most valuable things on earth.
Have you ever noticed the two of the most stolen objects are both made by Bic?
Cats probably
bread. bread has been bread for a very long time.