Graduate invents ‘smart’ coffee cup

Cold cuppas or a scorched mouth could be a thing of the past with the invention of a ‘smart’ coffee cup capable of indicating the perfect drinking temperature.

Rengrui Xiang, a graduate from the University of Nottingham’s Ningbo campus in China, has won an international design award for the re-usable cup which tells users when the beverage inside is the optimum 85C.

The former Product Design and Manufacture student decided to pursue the concept after seeing commuters burn their mouths after buying coffee on the move.

“I wanted to create a smart coffee cup that reveals the temperature of the hot drink inside so as to indicate the best time point for drinking in an intuitive way,” she said.

The coffee cup prototype has three layers which include a thermochromic material in the middle to enable colour change on the surface when the temperature of the drink changes – brown indicates that the drink is too hot, grey too cold and red is just right.

“There was research about the best drinking temperature and it found that 85C is most suitable,” said Rengrui.

“If lower than 65C, the drink would be too cold for the human tongue.

“With this finding and the indicative material to signify temperature change, the smart coffee cup idea became possible.”

The budding designer created the coffee cup under the tuition of Professor Yi Teng Shih, without whom she says she couldn’t have won the A’ Design Award and Competition.

She said: “I’m especially grateful for his guidance. He told me good design doesn’t just solve problems but also solves them in an intelligent way.

“It was Professor Shih who encouraged me to participate in the A’ Design Award and Competition.

“Wining this award means more than glory to me. It was a great recognition of my design capability.”

http://www.nottinghampost.com/news/uk-world-news/graduate-invents-smart-coffee-cup-1020275