Petty engineering design rant 5 - the spoons of doom

P.E.D.R. returns with a light-hearted entry, which some of you may be familiar with: my parents' cutlery, and in particular, the spoons. I don't have a picture of the real thing, so imagine something like these ones:















but with slightly chunkier handles. Handles, in fact, whose chunkiness outweighs the business end of the spoon. And thus the spoons, following the simple physical laws of leverage, tend to overbalance if you don't put them far enough onto your bowl.

The best and most amusing effects occur when one's dish contains an edible delight with a bit of viscosity to it, such as a thick soup, or a pudding, or porridge or similar. (Well, perhaps not porridge in my case, but the delightfulness of edible dishes is strictly subjective... Let's stick with puddings for the sake of this particular argument.)

Thus, at some inevitable yet indeterminate point through the course of the meal, the forces of gravity acting on the handle finally create a turning moment sufficient to overcome those being applied by the viscosity of the pudding, and the dessert-laden miniature impromptu Roman siege engine of doom catapults into action and claims another victim. A positive triumph of utensil engineering. Yes indeed :o)