
Why pens have rubbery grips - lainon
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/19/1706233114.full
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qwerty_asdf
Most commodity ballpoint pens didn't have rubbery grips prior to the mid
1990's. I remember back-to-school shopping at the end of one summer, and most
of the bags of pens were upgraded to have built-in grips. Prior to that, you'd
buy triangular slip-on sleeves separately, if you wanted additional gripping
traction.

It was a trend that started, and progressed like many other marketing arms
races. One stand-out product emerged and out sold the normal offerings, due to
novelty, and all other imitators jumped on the band wagon to cash in on that
novelty.

~~~
katastic
>triangular slip-on sleeves separately

As someone who grew up in the 90's, I can almost guarantee you would get the
crap beat out of them for walking into school with something like that.

Thank goodness they're integrated into the pen now!

~~~
clwg
I was a teenager throughout the 90's and was a bit of a bully from time to
time, and I don't think bullying has changed much since then. If it wasn't a
pen, it was the shoes, t-shirt, or the way someone pronounced a word.

Bullies are bullies, they will pick up on any thing they can and exploit it to
belittle another person.

~~~
marzell
My parents once bought me Mighty Ducks shoes from Payless, without consulting
me, when I was in around the 7th grade; suddenly everyone at my school was a
bully.

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jaclaz
It seems to me that research have learned titling from modern journalism.

It is the actual research title and it is clickbaity.

>Without a large true contact area made by our hands, it would be nearly
impossible to lift a glass or to hold onto a handrail in a transport vehicle.

As a side note, the reason why usually you don't drop a glass when gripping it
with your hand is largely due -besides friction - to the fact that the glass
is usually a truncated cone with the larger base on the upper side, and as
well handrails have a suitable outer diameter to be enclosed in the hand and
allowing to tight your fingers around it - between 40 and 50 mm.

Try holding (in a transport vehicle) onto an 80 or 90 mm handrail (rubber
covered) ...

~~~
johnday
Or even just an upside down glass in the comfort of your own house.

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hawski
Are there any smartphones that have a rubber coating? Something akin to the
Thinkpad lid coating. I use a rubbery case, buy that's something else.

That got me to thinking. Why doesn't Lenovo cash on Thinkpad brand with a
smartphone line that would be branded as such. It could use the same rubber
coating and maybe titanium skeleton or something. Maybe I'm just not aware
that they indeed have such a thing.

~~~
mi100hael
Apple made (makes?) a thin, silicone-coated case for the iPhone. It was
monumentally annoying. The extra grippiness of the silicone meant that every
time I pulled my phone out of my pants pocket, the pocket came with it and
turned inside out. It was also hard to put the phone back in my pocket because
it would grip the pocket material instead of sliding in. And finally, the
silicone was a victim of its own grippiness and wore out rather quickly.

I've found a textured case like Magpul makes to be far superior to one with
soft rubber.

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tomaskafka
That's why I dislike iPhone - 5S was last grippable version, since then it's
slippery material PLUS slippery shape.

Miss my HTC M7 - it had a few milimeters larger back than front, and well
defined edge, it was the last phone that you could hold really comfortably and
safely even without the case.

~~~
wlesieutre
iPhone SE is just as grippable as the 5S, it's the same design but 2.5 years
newer. Unless something changed in the aluminum finish, but it feels fine to
me. (Don't have a 5S for comparison)

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losteverything
I just saw on a catalog the 20 or 25th anniversary of a certain Bic pen. It
was on the cover page

I thought it signified some milestone in printing where component pieces
combimed with easy logo/name printing changed the logo game

Thus, more pens made with plastic (rubbery) grips had to do with manufacturing

Now i am enlightened

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tomc1985
Because it sucks to hold a plastic pen slipping around in sweaty hands?

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_h_o_d_
Terrible title problems. To save time, here's the outline given when you click
on the link: TL-DR: 'Why does gripping a pen, tool, or handle feel more secure
when it is coated with a rubbery material? The keratin of the skin outer layer
is stiff and rough at a small scale. When encountering a smooth, stiff, and
impermeable surface, such as polished metal or glass, the actual contact area
is initially small as is the friction. Because the keratin softens when it is
hydrated by the moisture secreted from the sweat pores, it requires many
seconds for the contact area to increase to the value reached almost
instantaneously with a soft material, such as a rubber. This mechanism might
be used by our tactile sense to identify materials and has implications for
the design of tactile displays. '

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yazan94
TLDR from the article:

> Because the keratin softens when it is hydrated by the moisture secreted
> from the sweat pores, it requires many seconds for the contact area to
> increase to the value reached almost instantaneously with a soft material,
> such as a rubber.

~~~
daxorid
This is interesting, yes, but it seems immediately ... odd to me.

Do we use rubber to manufacture tires because the frictional coefficient
between rubber and asphalt is established rapidly due to asphalt sweating? No,
it's because the frictional coefficient is already rather high to begin with.
Is this not the case with rubber-keratin as well? Why involve sweat when
static friction is sufficiently explanatory?

~~~
city41
They are talking about non rubbery surfaces

> When encountering a smooth, stiff, and impermeable surface, such as polished
> metal or glass, the actual contact area is initially small as is the
> friction. Because the keratin softens when it is hydrated by the moisture
> secreted from the sweat pores, it requires many seconds for the contact area
> to increase to the value reached almost instantaneously with a soft
> material, such as a rubber.

~~~
euyyn
As compared to rubbery ones.

> the value reached almost instantaneously with a soft material, such as a
> rubber

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vaishaksuresh
How is this a thing that needs explaining?

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zaroth
Try actually reading the paper. The analysis is actually quite compelling.

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vaishaksuresh
I did read the paper and I'm not saying the analysis isn't compelling. I'm
saying it is obvious and does not need a paper to be explained.

~~~
zaroth
_The process by which human fingers gives rise to stable contacts with smooth,
hard objects is surprisingly slow. Using high-resolution imaging, we found
that, when pressed against glass, the actual contact made by finger pad ridges
evolved over time following a first-order kinetics relationship. This
evolution was the result of a two-stage coalescence process of microscopic
junctions made between the keratin of the stratum corneum of the skin and the
glass surface. This process was driven by the secretion of moisture from the
sweat glands, since increased hydration in stratum corneum causes it to become
softer. Saturation was typically reached within 20 s of loading the contact,
regardless of the initial moisture state of the finger and of the normal force
applied._

So, nothing to see here, totally obvious?

~~~
vaishaksuresh
Many words to say "Moist fingers grips smooth,hard objects better than dry
finger". Again, I'm not saying it is useless or uninteresting or that the
science is simple, I'm saying you can see the behavior without knowing the
science and still understand it.

Then again, what is interesting to one person might not be equally interesting
another.

~~~
Gracana
But it's not just a moist finger, initial moisture doesn't matter much. It's
the whole process that starts when you touch an object. That doesn't seem
obvious.

