Like many great-but-impractical ideas, Slipbath started as a bit of banter over beers on a Friday night. I was fixated on the idea of bathing in warm coconut oil. (I’m not sure exactly where this came from, but I’d guess some overly goopy scene in a scifi novel.) I was trying to pitch this idea to current Lab board member Boris, and of course as someone with a background in software I got bogged down in the technical and logistical details. Specifically, what are the possible ways a bath in coconut oil could go poorly, and how can we avoid them? Also, what about the experience is likely to be the most appealing, and how can we maximize those aspects?
A few things come to mind immediately. One is right in the title of the project: Slip-bath. In the most naïve interpretation, a typical bathtub filled with warm oil, entering and exiting the tub comes with great risk. Every surface is slippery, and the vessel itself is hard enough to knock you out or worse if you fall in just the wrong way. How can we either minimize the risk of slipping, or make it impossible to do so?
Let’s consider the second half of the title. Slip-bath. Immersion is the essence, or at least coverage. Temperature has a role as well. Are there ways to explore oil on skin that go beyond “fill a large vessel with oil and jump into it”? Perhaps a recirculating waterfall, or a narrow seat-like bath that minimizes oil volume? Maybe an old-timey clawfoot tub is best. We’ll explore pros and cons in future updates.
Speaking of the oil, it seems important that it be clean. While some may find the excess of a fresh quantity of oil for each bather luxurious, engineering is the art of balancing big ideas with real-world constraints, and it’s unlikely that anyone building a slipbath would want to spend a pile of money on coconut oil each time someone entered the tub. Is there anything we can learn from industry? Perhaps there’s some oil filtration system used in food service or the petroleum industry that could be repurposed for this use.