Inside Science
/
Article

What’s a Snap Fit?

SEP 23, 2021
You may not know a snap fit by its name, but they’re all around us from pen caps to some water bottle caps.
Inside Science Contributor
What’s a Snap Fit?

(Inside Science) -- Ever heard of a snap fit? It’s kind of a fancy way to describe two pieces of (usually) plastic that fit or snap together. If you take look around your house, you’ll probably see snap fits everywhere. From pen caps to zip-close bags, the world is full of everyday examples of snap fits. Yet as universal and abundant as the snap fit is, the mechanics of how it works hadn’t been studied too intensely. But researchers in Japan decided to dive into the physics of snap fits, with some unexpected results.

More Science News
/
Article
A combination of tunneling barrier mobility and transparency parameters produces the most accurate lifetime of polymers.
/
Article
Thin alumina coatings can create a barrier for tritium, reducing its permeation while fundamentally changing the permeation process.
/
Article
Pairing a plasma actuator with the Coanda effect enables low-cost control of airflow in HVAC systems.
/
Article
Metropolis–Hastings algorithms reduce data smearing and improve density distribution results.
/
Article
Classical approaches to verifying a subject’s position can be easily fooled. Quantum optics can help, but only if the systems are fast and have low loss.
/
Article
The sweeping federal financial assistance rule proposed by the Office of Management and Budget is on hold. The reprieve may be an opportunity for the rule to fizzle.
/
Article
His 1988 sketch of how to use Antarctic ice to detect neutrinos led to the IceCube observatory, which made the first detections of high-energy neutrinos in 2013.
/
Article
After collecting experimental data from a replica of the renowned bell, researchers used a technique called modal analysis to model its acoustic properties.
/
Article
At the end of the turbulent 1960s, the postwar funding boom in US physics came to a crashing halt. The lessons learned then may be helpful to today’s physicists.