Men, however you should use urinals that imitate the strategy used by dogs: a research group led by University of Waterloo (Canada) had discovered in 2025 the perfect male urinal design. And today the research, published on PNAS Nexuswon the IgNobel Prize for Physics.
In fact, to avoid annoying (and sometimes problematic) splashes, it is a purely geometric problem. Even more surprisingly (or perhaps not), this is also the strategy used by dogs to avoid peeing on themselvesor on the legs.
For this reason, researchers have demonstrated that the most efficient forms are obtained only by changing this aspect, identifying thecritical angle within which there is a lower risk of splashes (splashback): the designed models, Cornucopia And Nautilus, in particular they have aangle equal to or less than 30°.
Urinals are an essential element of public spaces, yet their design has remained essentially unchanged for over a century – the authors write – The use of urinals often causes significant splashback, as urine splashes upon impact with the surface, generating droplets that return to the floor and the user, creating unhygienic environments, high cleaning costs and an unpleasant workload for cleaning staff. The angle of attack of the jet is one of many factors that influence splashback
©PNAS Nexus
How can you blame them actually. And how could we not thank them (hoping they will be listened to) for proposing something solution to all this.
We theoretically predict and experimentally validate that, when the angle of incidence is less than an invariant critical value of approximately 30°, the splashback magnitude under human urination conditions can be significantly reduced
The researchers worked not only to define the angle from a theoretical point of view but also to designing the “perfect” urinals.
©PNAS Nexus
Experiments confirm that these designs can substantially reduce splashback to only 1.4% of the splash of a common contemporary commercial urinal
©PNAS Nexus
But, like all IgNobel prize-winning research, once a possible initial laugh ends, it turns out that there is much more of some unexpected curiosity.
Widespread adoption of the urinal models described in this work would result in significant savings in human resources, costs, cleaning chemicals and water consumption, with a significant impact on modern society in terms of improving sustainability, hygiene and accessibility
©PNAS Nexus
The calculations have already been done and extensively documented. Will it be enough?
Sources: Annals of Improbable Research / Annals of Improbable Research/Youtube / PNAS Nexus
