Your opinion of this quote? "I see the glass as over-designed..."?

Question

I thought of this quote to put on the T-shirt of the Dept of Chemical Engg., A.C.Tech.

The reference is to the quote " Some see the glass as half-full, some see it as half-empty ".

"Over-designed" is a chemical engineering term that means you design equipment that can take more load than you're going to put now, so that the capacity can be expanded later on.
A glass half-full is over-designed - to a chemical engineer.

Answer 1

Cute idea. Of course, since we don't know the full range of applications and environments in which the glass might be required to function, the more conservative observation is that the glass has excess capacity.

Answer 2

Mostly, 'overdesign' is used to allow a safety margin in excess of the known threats to a system, in order to ensure that it can cope with unknown threats.

This is best exemplified by military specifications for equipment, which must be robust enough to resist physical damage that will probably never happen to it.

It is also the reason why Roman infrastructure items such as aqueducts (built to military spec by army engineers) are still in use today.

The excess capacity of the glass allows for the unpredictable shaking of your hand when you're already half-cut.

Perhaps the T-shirt should just say: "drunk enough yet ?"

Answer 3

Sounds like it would make sense. Maybe you should put the whole half-full, half-empty quote in smaller lettering on the back so regular everyday people can make sense of it!

Answer 4

I've always said that you need a smaller glass.