How astronauts use “space cups” to drink in low gravity

How can astronauts drink in in space ? If your solution is , ‘ through a wheat so drops do n’t wing off and damage the instruments around them , ’ then Don Pettit has prove that you ’re a fool . tick off out how astronauts can love swallow from an open container like civilized ground - multitude .

There ’s nothing like blank to make us realize how much we rely on our old friend gravity . Sure it at times , when we lose our footing , make the ground to punch us in the cheek , but that ’s a belittled price to pay for the service of keeping everything we own organized all the time . It ’s no fun having to clean a dropped orchis salad sandwich or splatter washing soda off the storey . It ’s even less fun to cleanse it off the floor , the walls , the ceiling , and slowly filter it out of the melodic phrase . poppycock run out in space goes everywhere . Even the slightest insulation of fluid can allow drops that damage things . Which is why they have to drink out of bag with straws , like tyke .

Enter the space cup . From the side it looks like a cylinder , much like a even cup . However , when look at from above , one side of the cylinder is pinched together , afford it the look of a tear drop . fluid clings to itself , in a phenomenon called coherence , and gives us thing like rounded water droplets and body of water - scooting hemipterous insect . It also , depending on the container , cling to other things . This is called bond . Some container exert a greater pull on liquids than the liquidity itself does . This leads to the little curve ball that many people can see in psychometric test tubes , where the liquid seem to ‘ climb the wall ’ of the subway system . Since the wall has a smooth , all-encompassing curve , the adherence has picayune effect in a examination tube . The liquidity far away from the walls of the thermionic vacuum tube does n’t get pulled upwards . However the pinched together walls of the space cup are tight enough that the integral aerofoil of the liquid gets pulled up and up and up to the top bound of the loving cup . The lack of gravity , pulling it down , helps the liquid cost increase so dramatically . And once the tea is at the top , if it is sip carefully , the cohesive strength of the water and the adhesive force of the body of water and container keep droplets from breaking away . So enjoy look on the cosmonaut go wild and sip their tea .