Hold onto your martinis, MIT’s making cocktails with biomimetic accessories
Engineering moves out of the office and into your local bar. All thanks to the team at MIT and world-renowned chef José Andrés.
As a driving principle of engineering design, biomimicry has brought us a number of innovative products, including Velcro and gliders. Continuing along those lines, MIT’s Lisa Burton and Nadia Cheng engineered two novel cocktail toppers that leverage the power of surface tension.
First up is the team’s “cocktail boat” concept. Created using a confection designed by chef José Andrés, the pentagonal craft is designed to mimic the movement of a lightweight water skimming insect. To accomplish this goal, the boat was designed with an “exhaust” that expels trapped liquor from the middle of its body. That means the stiffer your drink, the faster the boat will go.
For their second design, Burton and Cheng created an elegant, floral pipette that can sip up tiny amounts of a drink and allow one to playfully imbibe their cocktail. In its original state, the pipette’s flower is shyly closed, its petals joined at their tips. Once introduced to a cocktail, however, the petals open up and are ready to be submerged in the liquid.
The real clever bit of this design comes when the pipette is removed from the drink. As the petals leave the libation, they return to their closed state. This creates an area of low hydrostatic pressure, which in turn traps a small amount of liquor in the floral pipette. Bar-goers can then sip their cocktails drop-by-drop, enjoying every bit of flavor.
While it is unclear if MIT’s new culinary invention will ever make it to market, they’ve published a paper that describes the science behind each project. Armed with a candy extruding 3D printer and bit of CAD know-how, you might be able to replicate these designs and spice up the next trip to your local watering hole.
Images and Video Courtesy of MIT