Traditional coasters are good for keeping coffee rings off the table, but that's about it. Spill more than a tablespoon and it's going all over the place.

This coaster, somewhat thicker than the usual kind, would be filled with diaper material designed to expand on contact with liquid, It would be contained in a way that lets it expand outwards in rays or tentacles, bringing the material into contact with more spilled liquid, thus causing further expansion until all it can absorb has been absorbed.
-- Voice, Jun 18 2020

Doesn't sound that hygienic to slurp the spilled coffee from out of.

Also if you spill coffee out of one side of your cup, does it then expand on that side, tipping the cup over so that coffee sloshes out of the other side? I suppose that spilled coffee would expand the other side, so that you could get a kind of sloshing - expanding - rising equilibrium and your cup could be pushed higher and higher by the ever expanding coaster until it hit the ceiling.
-- pocmloc, Jun 18 2020


Things that make me go "hmmmmmmm"....
-- 21 Quest, Jun 19 2020


As long as they come with a mini-mangle to recover the absorbed spillages.
-- xenzag, Jun 19 2020


[+] for an image of pseudo living, organic thing spreading out on the coffee table chasing it's life blood.
-- wjt, Jun 20 2020


[+] for the invention, and another for that annotation. ^
-- 21 Quest, Jun 20 2020



random, halfbakery