The best discoveries are total accidents, and bubble tea is no exception.
The drink as we know it today found its origins in Taiwan in 1988 when Lin Hsiu Hui, a product developer in a tea house, decided on a whim to pour her tapioca pudding into her iced tea.
Perhaps excited by the extra level of texture she had incorporated into her drink, she passed it around the meeting room and it was met with acclaim; the product was tweaked and brought onto the market, and its sales rocketed.
Self-adhesive
nail wraps can be tricky to fit to the nail. To avoid ripples in the
surface, the film must be flexible enough to be smoothed into small
corners but also taut across the surface of the nail.
The
wrap must also be tough enough to avoid tearing during application and
have a reasonable strength. All these properties can be assessed using a
tensile test.
Nail wraps are flexible adhesive films that are smoothed onto the nail’s surface and trimmed.
They
provide an opportunity for intricate designs that can be printed by the
manufacturer that would otherwise be difficult to paint by hand.
The design will be consistent across all nails and removes the difficulty of using the non-dominant hand to paint.
A
manicure is subject to a lot of abuse as the wearer goes about their
daily life (opening jars, cooking, typing on a keyboard).
For
repeat purchase of a nail polish, it must be able to stand up to this
type of use. As well as the adhesion properties mentioned above, the
stiffness and toughness of a polish are all extremely important.
An
overly stiff, brittle polish would be undesirable as it would break
when a nail is bent when opening a soda can, for example. The low
stiffness is important for the polish to follow the nail as it bends. A
high strain to failure is also crucial, or the polish film would break
under the slightest deformation.
Nail polish has been developed to have a faster drying time with brands claiming “dry in 60 seconds” or “quickdry”.
However,
smudging a manicure is still a common complaint. There are also
difficulties accelerating the drying time of more natural polishes
containing fewer volatile solvents. New products must be tested for this
in a consistent way.
The
way we look and feel is more important than ever in the age of constant
selfie-taking and the abundance of cameras at every social gathering.
This
is not to mention the impossible beauty standards set by photoshopped
billboards and magazine shoots that ordinary people feel they have to
live up to.
It
is no surprise that cosmetics are more popular than ever, with the
global cosmetic market estimated to reach US$675 billion by 2020.
We are often asked why there are so many different blade fixture options available from Stable Micro Systems.
Our range of blades vary considerably in size, material, thickness and sharpness. In general they are used to measure the Bite/Cutting Force of products which in some instances can relate to their ‘Toughness’. The following guidelines may help in clarifying the potential use of each.
Sliced meat: how does it hold together?
How
a sliced meat or meat substitute holds together is an important
textural expectation of the consumer. The binding characteristics of the
sliced product can be greatly affected by its formulation and
processing thus affecting its tensile strength.
Whilst
tensile grips or pneumatic grips are the traditional choice for tensile
testing there are alternatives for a soft and thin product such as
sliced meat. A Film Support Rig (shown in Figure 16) is
designed to hold small amounts of thin or film-like material in a drum
configuration in order to measure the biextensional properties of the
films using a puncture test.
The best discoveries are total accidents, and bubble tea is no exception. 
