Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China has developed a toilet bowl that easily pushes its porcelain and ceramic brethren aside. It has a very smooth surface that nothing, including human feces, sticks to. This is not only more pleasant for the visitor, but also for the environment, because removing streaks from the toilet bowl requires a lot of water.
In the toilet bowl, the researchers used a mixture of plastic and water-repellent sand grains. They were able to turn it into a (small) bowl as we know it using a 3D laser printer. They then tested the surface with all kinds of materials and it quickly became clear that they hadn’t found anything that would stick.
Fake stool didn’t work, nor did milk, honey, and yogurt. The same researchers point to plant leaves having the same property: every drop of water rolls down. Even if they sanded the bowl with sandpaper, that repellent property remained intact. The condition is that you occasionally treat the pot with silicone spray. This is good news, because other “smooth” materials often lose this property after a period of time due to wear. The invention could save millions of liters of water in the long term.
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