Taste Your Drink Differently with This Glass That Changes Its Center of Gravity
The "Balanced Glass Design" can change how one tastes their beverage by adjusting the cup's center of gravity and making it feel heavier.
Perception is everything
How we interact with the world can greatly impact the way we enjoy certain things. Whether it is using metal utensils at a fancy restaurant or drinking from a glass versus a plastic cup, the feeling of weight and density makes us think what we are consuming is better in some manner. This effect is what doctoral student third-year doctoral student at the University of Tokyo, Masaharu Hirose, was trying to study in better detail.
He had designed and created a simple device that is able to shift its center of gravity via a small weight and slider to change how heavy the cup feels in the drinker's hand. Based on this data, researchers could determine with greater certainty if a more premium "feel" really does equate to an improved taste.
Designing the cup mechanism
Hirose's design features a cup at one end and a long handle just below it. Next to this handle is a weight and motor system that can move this extra mass closer or further from the cup which causes the user to perceive a change in weight. He went with a Raspberry Pi 4 for controlling the motor and driver pair, and he created the handle and slider from laser cut plastic to keep the overall weight down. A Python program running on the Pi is responsible for changing the cup's center of gravity on the fly based on what the researcher needs.
How does changing the weight impact the taste?
As seen in this video by Hirose, the Balanced Glass Design was tested with four different participants. They were each tasked with trying a sip of wine at a high center of gravity (low perceived weight) first, and then taking another with a low center of gravity. The hypothesis was that the wine would taste better when consumed out of the "heavier" cup, and that turned out to be true. Each subject rated the second, heavier tasting as being bolder and having more flavor than the previous.
Going further
This device was an ingenious way to adjust how one can taste something suddenly with just a simple sliding mechanism. Based on the research done with the Balanced Glass Design, companies that produce beverages can change how they package them to give a better experience. Hirose does not have any future plans for other flavor perception changing devices yet, but he is interested in where this research will take him. You can read an interview here with Hirose where he discusses his experience in greater detail.