There’s good news for those of us who’ve ever felt embarrassed about not being able to get the cap off a bottle. A team of researchers in Japan have found that the bottle’s round shape could actually be to blame, and that getting caps off bottles with a parallelogram-shaped cross-section is considerably easier.
Developed by Noriko Hashida, a professor at Shibaura Institute of Technology, working alongside the Hakuyo Glass company, the new bottle’s flatter shape more easily fits in the hand, allowing for a tighter grip. And that, in turn, allows more force to be applied when opening lids. Testing was done with participants aged 20 to 80, and even elderly users were able to open any bottle with the new parallelogram shape.
Hakuyo Glass has a patent application filed for the new design, and is already planning to put it into production. And while being able to actually open a bottle is a great feature, it probably wouldn’t hurt for them to also market it as something that is never going to accidentally roll off a kitchen counter and smash on the floor. [Tech-on!]
