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Why does a spray bottle work?

alexanderellis.github.io

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Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#81

Post by dredmorbius »

digi_owl wrote: post #35
jetrink wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MONIAC [1] was an analog computer designed in 1949 that used water to model the national economy of the United Kingdom. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC

Made by an engineer turned economist from New Zealand no less. Sadly he is better know for a diagram he drew of an observation, the Phillips curve. I fear that much like this hydraulic model, Steve Keen's work is likely to be ignored or ridiculed by future economists while they fret over religious X diagrams.

There's a fairly significant overlap between engineers and economists. Chemists and physicists also.

Largely out of the economic mainstream, since the 20th century, sadly.

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#82

Post by manigandham »

markkanof wrote: post #53
gxs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jumping to the conclusion that everything a company does is calculated and delibarate is a mistake I see a lot of people make, but in this case it’s accurate. In a business that operates at a scale of 100s of thousands if not millions of bottles sold annually, cents matter and can make up a significant portion of revenue. With this in mind, there is a huge incentive to get people to buy sooner rather than later and m…

Maybe, but it seems more likely this isn't due to malice but just stupidity/apathy. Maybe most companies just aren't aware of this technology, or they don't want to implement something new because of uncertainty about the potential problems with the new technology. For example, maybe 1 out of a 100 of these bottles gets completely clogged and won't dispense anything at all. That looks bad for the company and maybe ev…

Large companies are constantly doing research and development which handles all of this. They definitely aren't stupid and aren't waiting around for youtube videos to learn about things.

They have teams that actively engage with new suppliers and inventors and are also getting pitched constantly with new ideas. It's most likely that extensive testing and consideration showed that this wasn't worth the costs. You even described such a scenario so I'm not sure why you think that's stupid or apathetic, when it's actually quite calculated.

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#83

Post by intrasight »

What I find most frustrating about the current class of spray bottles is that they've removed the ability to unscrew the head, and therefore you can't a) get out the liquid which can't be sprayed, or b) reuse the bottle.

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#84

Post by fireattack »

otras wrote: post #54
fireattack wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the map I can't tell how the bus can "go through Bennett Alley and continue straight into the bus tunnel". The streets are not aligned, are they?

Good call! You're right that "continue straight" might not be the best wording, as they aren't aligned on the map. In real life, they're also not perfectly aligned, but the entrance area to the tunnel is much wider than appears on the map, meaning they can take a slight right to continue down the tunnel. My bet is I was thinking about roads in terms of Boston roads, where going straight is often more of an abstract c…

Fantastic, thanks!

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#85

Post by thomk »

vanilla-almond wrote: post #28

A few years ago, a British inventor appeared on a TV show called Dragon's Den (UK version of Shark Tank) and pitched his idea of an improved spray bottle called the Anyway Spray. Instead of a normal plastic tube inside a bottle with an opening at the end, he designed a tube with millions of tiny perforations along its length. This meant the spray bottle could operate at any angle (even upside down) and could empty al…

That episode of Dragons Den is infuriating. Here is a guy who has invented something with a widespread, common appeal. He invented a product that potentially fixes a real problem in 1,000,000,000 units per year and he has to give away 20% of his invention to get support.

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#86

Post by kazinator »

vanilla-almond wrote: post #28

A few years ago, a British inventor appeared on a TV show called Dragon's Den (UK version of Shark Tank) and pitched his idea of an improved spray bottle called the Anyway Spray. Instead of a normal plastic tube inside a bottle with an opening at the end, he designed a tube with millions of tiny perforations along its length. This meant the spray bottle could operate at any angle (even upside down) and could empty al…

If it was simply perforations, it wouldn't work when the bottle is upright because those perforations would let the air into the top of the straw. Rather, the straw is made of a membrane which lets water through while blocking gas.

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#87

Post by userbinator »

Sharlin wrote: post #34
jarfil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this use of "staging area" comes from the military use, which in turn comes from the theater "staging", both predating git and the bottle.

Yep, it’s more likely the author got the ”staging area” from git, as an analogy familiar to software engineers (or else from the military/theater context), it’s not an official fluid dynamics term used by spray bottle engineers. At least I don’t think so :p

Yes, I was a bit bemused by the use of "staging area" and thought the author was deliberately going for an anachronistic effect, in much the same way that (computer) machine instructions were called "orders" in the very beginning.

The more common term is just "cylinder".

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#88

Post by mirimir »

This is cute and all, but still silly. At least, for those of us whose childhoods included dependence on wells with hand pumps. Or particularly, responsibility for maintaining said hand pumps. Because it's an ancient design. Old ones used leather flaps as one-way valves. Same for tire pumps.

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#89

Post by mackman »

kazinator wrote: post #86
vanilla-almond wrote: post #28

A few years ago, a British inventor appeared on a TV show called Dragon's Den (UK version of Shark Tank) and pitched his idea of an improved spray bottle called the Anyway Spray. Instead of a normal plastic tube inside a bottle with an opening at the end, he designed a tube with millions of tiny perforations along its length. This meant the spray bottle could operate at any angle (even upside down) and could empty al…

If it was simply perforations, it wouldn't work when the bottle is upright because those perforations would let the air into the top of the straw. Rather, the straw is made of a membrane which lets water through while blocking gas.

I’m not sure you can make a membrane that does that? I get the sense there is a membrane that wicks the fluid around the surface of the tube so you always have to pull in liquid before the gas? Maybe that’s the same thing.

Re: Why does a spray bottle work?

#90

Post by logicallee »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #41
vanilla-almond wrote: post #28

A few years ago, a British inventor appeared on a TV show called Dragon's Den (UK version of Shark Tank) and pitched his idea of an improved spray bottle called the Anyway Spray. Instead of a normal plastic tube inside a bottle with an opening at the end, he designed a tube with millions of tiny perforations along its length. This meant the spray bottle could operate at any angle (even upside down) and could empty al…

Why isn't this in everything? I'd easily pay an extra few cents to have this in spray bottles. It's such a frustrating problem.

In my quick analysis (could be mistaken, I welcome corrections), if this is one-time disposible then it only makes sense if the value to the consumer of the amount of product not thrown out as a result, is less than the extra cost of licensing and manufacturing this and this cost can be passed onto the consumer somehow.

In other words, if this costs 5¢ more then it is worth spending an extra 5¢ on if you keep from throwing at least 5¢ of product out. Below this it is better to throw a little product away. (However, consumers might overvalue being able to use the last little bit of product. Perhaps they value at 25¢ to not throw the last 1/30th of the product away, even though they paid less than $7.50 for the whole package. i.e. perhaps they paid $5.00 but would pay $5.25 to keep from throwing away the last 1/30th of the product. However this seems unlikely!)

More likely, if it costs 25¢ it is more economical to throw away, for example, 5¢ of product instead, by not having it.

However this analysis assumes that the 25¢ is passed onto the consumer. If the consumer is very price-sensitive (for example there is a standard price and very standard volume, as is the case with milk, though that isn't dispensed this way) then adding this as a competitive advantage would benefit the consumer, while the supplier eats the costs as a cost of acquiring this consumer.

This is my quick analysis.

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