Advances in toilet system testing: Wigglers & Pseudo Poop

Whither waste? Toilet testing, not everyone’s cup of tea, makes things flow better, for society’s sake. Metafilter features a little roundup of toilet testing info (thanks to investigator Scott Langill for bringing it to our attention):

Pseudo Poop for Testing Toilets

Testing toilet flush performance naturally requires the replication of real-world loads. Striving for accuracy, a Texas A&M study (PDF) evaluated polypropylene balls and Play-Doh sheathed in condoms before settling on a test payload of two Water Wigglers [a photo of one is reproduced here, at right] per flush. In contrast, the Maximum Performance project [one of their images is reproduced here, below] recommends the use of 350-gram specimens of extruded soybean paste (“specimens that float shall not be used”).