Deborah PickettA colleague has left two boxes full of water in the foyer, as a permeability test, for several months. I figure it’s fair game to prank his impromptu art installation now.
I'm not telling anyone I did this, but every single person at my office will know exactly who's responsible.
Catsnfats 🇺🇦@futzle me when I fart in my cubicle…🤷♀️
Fun fact: the lids are all identical, made in the same tool. The bases are also made in the same tool, but we put different sized cores into the moulding machine to make different height cavities before filling with polystyrene bead. This is much cheaper than having three separate tools.
Matt H@futzle this makes perfect sense.
Colin@futzle "Many people can make these, the skill is in making them for low cost to high standards at volume"?
😀🚲@futzle do the cores form the inside of the base and just sit deeper into a mating mold? I used to design thermoforming tools, that was all molded just from one side.
@enobacon Basically, yes. The injection points are on the outside bottom of the box base.
The Secretbatcave@futzle oh sweet, I didn’t know that was possible! Do you have any pictures?
@secretbatcave Nothing pretty. Injection moulding is all about filling negative spaces so it’s best explained with cutaway diagrams.
@futzle Well now I'm curious if the box seals are part of the test, what the nature of the seal is, if they get refilled, what's being measured. WHAT IS THE METHODOLOGY DEBORAH I AM SLIGHTLY CURIOUS BUT WILL GET OVER IT.
@abstractcode Inside the box my colleague has scribbled a waterline and a date. The intention was to see how much water escaped over time, but that mark is dated August and the water is still lapping at it, so I think it's clear that a negligible amount of moisture is escaping. The base has a lip around its rim which the lid slots onto, making it a pretty good seal, not spillproof but satisfactory for its designed purpose, which is to transport frozen seafood overseas.
The experiment is, AFAIK, over, but no one wants to move 20 kg of sloshing water from where it's been sitting for months.
The experiment is, AFAIK, over, but no one wants to move 20 kg of sloshing water from where it's been sitting for months.
@futzle Are you engaging in a battle of wills to see who can be forced into ending the experiment and publishing the paper?
sabik
D. B. Stuck
Brian Okken 
Su_GAdding art interpretive signing: So well done! Such a great idea! I also love Brian’s suggestion to “add “on loan from…”
And the many witty remarks in this thread 🙂
Ko Simon toku ingoa 
@futzle why is the lid of one mirror imaged?
@SimonCHulse It's just turned 180 degrees.
(We do have several tools to make this lid because one machine can't make enough for demand.)
@futzle the joke is going over my head? Is it that two boxes have been there so long they made a baby box?
@SimonCHulse I thought that the two boxes next to each other looked like two thirds of a sports podium for awarding medals. We happen to also make the same box in a shorter height, so I completed the set.
(There's no deeper joke than that. I just like putting art intpretation signs up for random shit.)
mastodon quixote@futzle @SimonCHulse Putting art interpretation signs up for random shit is SUCH a fun idea and i am going to be assiduously looking for opportunities to do it myself for the foreseeable future
Anthony DavidHmmm. I have a lab full of so much stuff from long-finished projects ...
econads@SimonCHulse @futzle it's not art but she's pretending it is
Petra@futzle @SimonCHulse which of the marks on the lid are significant and which are a side effect of the mould? I've always wondered about the circles you find on polystyrene
@PetraOleum The rectangles are by design; they are plates which we swap in and out for various purposes. The fish symbol means it's safe for frozen air freight. The ♸ means the polymer is polystyrene, and we do recycle it here, bring your packaging back, please. Each plate is held on with screws, and there are a dozen or so extra legacy plate screws at random places leaving divots on the lid.
The medium circles, two of them, are injection points. That's where the bead gets injected into the mould.
The little welts all over are impressions left by core vents. They are tiny steam holes for adding steam to the already-injected bead to fuse it into the desired shape.
The big circles are ejector rod points. After the part has been made, fused, and the mould opened, circular plates are pushed from behind to spit the snug part out of the mould so that the cycle can repeat.
@SimonCHulse
Greg Hills@SimonCHulse It's not. The one on the right is just turned 180° to the other two so the writing reads upside down. 🙂
@winterknell the letters are similar enough to vertically symmetrical and the resolution is low so it fooled me!
@SimonCHulse The real question is why it's turned that way.
The boring answer is, whoever put it there wasn't thinking about Mastodon, didn't think it mattered for the experiment, and thought nobody would care which way it faced. Foolish of them.
The better answer is, it's a deliberate feature of the art installation, put there by the designer to ever so subtly confuse the observer's mind.
peteryeates@futzle I feel like you got two escalation options here - bronze medal guy https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bronze-medal or (I’m assuming these are sturdy enough to carefully stand on) a Peter Norman memorial, with two black gloves and three badges on top
@peteryeates These are both viable (thank you), but I wouldn't recommend standing on one of those lids. They're not that sturdy.
The Drop Bear 2.0
devopscats@futzle sassy++
Graham C@futzle I once did that with a dirty plate that sat on the staffroom table for two weeks
Habrok@futzle Now I'm curious: does your box also contain water and a scribbled line?
Paul@futzle I wonder how it would have gone with wine instead?
s0 Traingirl Era@futzle but have you placed a rubber duck floating on the water in the boxes???
@s0 This would be an excellent followup prank.
Andy Fletcher
Jack Yan (甄爵恩)@futzle I love this!
Irina@futzle Is the third box full of water too, or is the unseeable amount of water in it zero?
@irina As I will inevitably have to clean up my own joke, I have left the third box dry.
Kvn W@futzle
This is the way.
This is the way.
ajft [SEC=&8212;haha]@futzle check carefully for overly enthusiastic colleagues who see "podium" and turn to each other with a "Hey, watch this!" as they step onto the box...
@ajft Fortunately it is under the stairs and they'll bang their head first. I had to duck to even take the photo.
DziadekYou own the internet for today. This is great. And the thread was fascinating.
IncredibishFor the win you need to put a small pool of water at the corner of one or more of the boxes...
Ozzelot@futzle Art. Science. The line is everywhere and nowhere.
Stan Stewart aka muz4now@futzle Ha! Brilliant...
Eric Phelps@futzle And now, in the interest of science, I'm wondering if they will test the opposite: Does anything leach into the water? Might as well take advantage of the test setup to get as much data as you can 😉.
@ericphelps I don’t think there’s anything dangerous that leaches out of the EPS. Apart from the polystyrene there’s a tiny trace of pentane which is in the raw material before it’s preexpanded. Food contacts our boxes all the time, not just fish but fruit and veg. I’d wash the food before eating but that would apply to any packaging.
Colin