There's different kinds of glue out there - super glue which bonds in seconds and slow setting glue where the items need to be held in place over a number of days.

Why not have a glue that only sticks for a certain amount of time?

If you had say, one, three, five and seven day glue, you could stick open tins of dog food to a wall out of reach, and then happily go away on holiday for a week safe in the knowledge that your pet would have enough food to last (and wouldn't scoff it all down on the first day).

On a negative note, I guess mechanics could use 366 day glue on anything that comes with a one-year warrantee.
-- gardnose, May 16 2001

Changing adhesion tape http://www.halfbake...ape/addlink#addlink
Symbiotic Idea [phoenix, Dec 07 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]

I was looking for a word between temporary and impermanent, but couldn't find one.
-- gardnose, May 16 2001


And as for the pet, time-delayed feeding mechanisms are baked as all get-out.
-- globaltourniquet, May 16 2001


maybe radioactive decay as in the man in the white suit
-- technobadger, May 17 2001


I see this as the plot device in "Revenge of the Nerds Part (X)." The nerds sneak into the cheerleaders' locker room, then cut apart their uniforms and restick them with time-delay glue. The next day, during the big game, right when the cheerleaders make a human pyramid, all their clothes pop right off. The football players are distracted and go running into posts and bleachers and each other. Mayhem ensues. Nerds win again. Yay.
-- ejs, May 21 2001


Una, gardnose is proposing glue, not tape.

Years ago, I remember seeing a PBS documentary on recent inventions which spent some time on the post-it. The explanation on how they came up with the post-it revolved around the desire to temporarily post a piece of paper. The product's adhesive strength was designed to fall somewhere within the realm of tape and glue...seems to me like gardnose's idea is the logical progression of the post-it adhesive: simply bottle it.
-- iuvare, May 22 2001


iuvare, it's the reverse. They came up with the glue first but didn't know what to do with it for five years. Then someone came up with the idea of the Post-it. (http://www.3m.com/about3M/pioneers/fry.html)
-- ejs, May 22 2001


UnaBubba: To call an idea baked, I thought you had to provide evidence of how it exists in the form proposed. I thought glue and tape shared similar qualities but served different ends and consequently came in different forms (which would explain why they have different names). If you think tape and glue are the same thing, then we should probably call it day.

>>Hat tip to ejs for the correction.<<

After revisiting the story of the post-it, it seems this idea was kinda baked 30 years ago in that it came to be...but kinda not, since it wasn't accepted in its original form. At best, it was briefly baked and then co-opted.
-- iuvare, May 22 2001


//So there is evidence that shows it exists in the form proposed...//

Radios exist. Alarm clock radios exist. Alarm clock recording radios exist (as do digital recording devices). When bakedness was proposed for your Radio Cassette Recorder idea, however, you refused on the grounds that the radio was too big and didn't have what was originally an optional feature.

"Sorry to be picky here" but gardnose's idea does not exist in the exact form proposed, much like your idea does not exist in the exact form you proposed (which is why I deleted all my annotations and links.)
-- iuvare, May 22 2001



random, halfbakery