The kind that "conveniently" transforms from product packaging into a razor-sharp weapon while you are trying to open it.
The explosion of Amazon and other online retailers made the advantages of clamshell packaging moot. However if you are a manufacturer, it may not be economically feasible to produce two different types of packaging for different retailers so lowest common denominator wins out.
Amazon has tried to combat clamshell packaging[1] with a few manufacturers (Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft), but it has yet to be adopted by the rest of the manufacturing industry.
[1]: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/amazoncom-cuts-pack...
I think we can all agree that someone overshot that target by a long range. Every single time I ask myself, "now how can I open this without damaging neither the package's content nor myself in the process?"
Which is also a feature to discourage shoplifting.
This is really a neat hack that probably allows for much less precise chip dumpers. I'm reminded of how awesome randomized algorithms in CS can seem, but in real life it is just extra magical.
You could have very accurate chip scales, load cells are cheap and very accurate - but how do you select exact 'N' grams of random sized potato chips?
Having a set of pans, where the first has eg. 17chips with a mass of 4.5g, the next has 19chips with a mass of 5.9g etc and then selecting from 4 of them them to hit the 20g bag size is very clever.
Simplifying the scenario might clarify what's happening. Imagine any given chip could weigh 1-2oz. And you are trying to fill a 2oz (minimum guaranteed content) bag. You already have 1 chip in the bag, weighing 1oz. The next chip you add (think "marginal" from econ class) weighs anywhere from 1-2oz and could tip the scale all the way up to 3oz, when you are only looking for 2oz in the bag. But if you use two scales, you have now a choice of TWO chips to put in the bag, so you pick the one that weighs closest to 1oz. And ultimately this allows you to fill more 2oz bags with the same quantity of chips.
(I find 'how its made' to be musak for nerds but that is a different post :-)
I admittedly haven't been to Youtube in forever, but that actually got me to click, if only to find out how (other than altering the querystring by hand) you did it.
I still didn't see how to do it though. Is that a logged-in option perhaps or am I just missing something?
In this case, it's a new adhesive. But how was that developed? What makes the new adhesive better suited to high-pressure applications while keeping the temperature and time constant? Inquiring geeks want to know!
edit: So I looked it up and it should only take 14 weeks in an active compost pile. I wonder if anyone has ever tested it?
It's still sealed, but the nick gives you something to leverage, so you can tear the packet open. Perhaps this isn't as common in the US?
Stress risers are a common cause of structural failure, and are usually designed around. Some well known examples where they cause failures: rectangular window openings in aluminum fuselages, knots in fishing line, a poorly designed head tube lug on a steel bicycle frame.
In this case, however, the failure of the material results in a good outcome: snack time.
God, all this talk of cereal and jerky and ramen makes it sound like I eat only crap. I eat vegetables, I swear!
You could also reduce the air pressure in the factory, e.g. by building it in one of the aforementioned high-altitude regions.
But then again, you could cook your chips in pressurized vessels a la Kentucky Fried Chicken. But you'd still have to truck all your potatoes up into the mountains. Decisions, decisions...
The right solution would be to squeeze to depress the bag a bit as it's sealed. Increasing the seal strength is a quick and dirty hack, but as we've all learned too well from software, the right solutions often got trumped by quick and dirty hacks. The customers just have to live with the consequence.
This is backwards, isn't it? Less dense air from Colorado would shrink the bag in California.
At a guess, maybe he meant the plants were east of the mountains, not west, so they would have to drive over them?
It would have cost next to nothing to attach slabs of foam rubber or gentle spring plates to the sealer. As the two sides move together, the air is gently squeezed out of the bag first. Sheer incompetence.
It's always been my understanding that the head room inside the package helps protect the contents.
It also seems possible that manufacturers wouldn't want chip bags to look comparatively "deflated" when sold in a same-pressure environment (and thus stand out less on the shelf compared to competitors'). Also, maybe bags rupture for reasons other than pressure change and thus a stronger seal is still desirable. Just guesses, though I know the article didn't make mention of any of those reasons.
When one talks about the "sheer incompetence" of a group of industry experts set to find a solution to a problem in an internet comment thread, while putting out an inane "solution" of his own that doesn't take all facts into account --and when he never knew all the constraints in the first place--, well, the Dunning–Kruger effect springs to mind...
