We wanted to break stuff so we did a mug drop-test. It didn’t go as planned.

How to Drop-Test Mugs

We could have just dropped each mug by hand from about the same height. But that wouldn’t be very scientific or particularly safe, and our boss was very keen to avoid being sued.

Instead, we set up a drop shelf 44” off the ground, on a stack of cinder blocks. The ground in question being a concrete garage floor covered with a car mat. It turns out that 44” is approximately the height at which an adult holds a cup of coffee, and therefore the height a mug is most likely to fall from. Science!

By the way, a drop shelf is a shelf that’s propped up with a rod that’s supported by a hinge that’s secured with a screw on a long piece of wire. You put the mug (or whatever you’re destroying that day) on the shelf, position the pin loosely in the hinge, and then when you’re ready, you tug on the wire, which pulls out the pin, so the hinge folds, and the shelf drops.

If that still makes no sense, don’t worry: we have video. You can just skip down and watch that if you want. It will hurt my feelings, but I’ll understand. It’s pretty cool.

For everyone still reading–my favorite people–we chose 14 mugs as our test subjects. We filled each mug with water, partly because mugs tend to contain liquid, but mainly because it looked way cooler on the video. No, no, don’t skip to the video. You’re committed now.

We dropped each mug three times, depending on whether it survived the first and second drops. We assumed most wouldn’t. In fact, as the day progressed, it became clear that we had all come into this experiment actively hoping to watch these mugs smash into pieces. Let’s see how that went. (Yes, now you get to watch a video.)

Results From 44″

Our efforts were rewarded with two glorious mug smashes. You saw the video, you know it was cool! To reward your efforts at reading this far, here’s a zoomed in photo of the damage on one of them:

Of course, that means that 12 out of 14 mugs survived three drops from 44”–that’s over 3.5’–onto hard concrete. All but one of those 12 didn’t even chip. Some still had water in the bottom when we scooped them up. A couple BOUNCED, just to really rub it in our faces.

By the time the last mug fell (and survived completely intact), we were all ready to see some mugs shatter. So for totally scientific reasons, we raised the shelf to 74.5.”

How to Drop-Test Mugs So They Actually Break

The reason we chose 74.5” had nothing to do with the height mugs regularly fall from, and everything to do with this being the tallest we could get our cinder block configuration. We figured that a drop of over 6’ onto barely be-rugged concrete would smash all 14 mugs to smithereens.

If that sounds unnecessarily harsh on the mugs, remember that we’d been waiting for breakages all morning only to get one lone mug smash and one cracked mug. OK, that one mug smash was pretty cool–as you probably know from the video–but we wanted more. Also, it was a balmy 95℉ in our testing environment and the sweat had not yet been worth it.

So anyway, we raised the shelf to 74.5” and dropped each mug three more times, using duplicates of the two non-survivors.

Another video, hurray!

Results From 74.5″

This round went slightly better for our bloodlust and slightly worse for the mugs–although not by much. Four mugs broke out of 14. Three of those were bona fide smashes:

The other one lost its handle when it clipped the bottom cinder block:

Oh, and one mug that cracked… If anyone wants to email in and explain that, please do. In fact, I would personally be forever grateful to anyone who can explain how 10 mugs survived a more than 6’ drop, yet the brand new mug I dropped in the sink from about 6” cracked in two.

We’d done everything we could to smash these mugs in a reasonable, controlled manner. It was the end of the experiment. So we went for the grand finale.

How We Set Up the Grand Finale

We put all the mugs on the shelf 74.5” up, filled them all with water, and dropped them ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It was mug Tower of Terror, except without the safety procedures.

Of course there’s video:

The Grand Finale Results

It was carnage. Mugs smashed against mugs, mugs smashed against floor, mugs smashed against cinder block. Mugs bounced and rolled as they fought to escape the drop zone of destruction, but it was no use–they crashed helplessly into each other until pieces of mug lay scattered across the floor.

Despite all this, seven mug survivors emerged from the wreckage. They weren’t all completely intact: a couple were chipped, but they were still usable as mugs. Behold:

We wouldn’t call our seven still standing indestructible, because that implies some sort of guarantee likely to put our lawyers in a tizzy. Suffice it to say, we’re grudgingly impressed.

What We Learned From Dropping a lot of Mugs

Prior to this experiment, anecdotal evidence had us believing that breaking a mug–especially a favorite mug–was as simple as accidentally dropping it onto a hard floor. Or even a soft floor. Or even from 2″ up onto a countertop.

Given this, we honestly expected that most of the mugs would smash, crack, or at the very least chip when dropped from 44”. However, only one chipped, one cracked, and one smashed–and the ones that chipped and cracked sustained no damage from a much higher height.

Here’s one thing we did notice: When our mugs hit the floor and nothing else, most of them survived intact. When they hit the floor and something else–the cinder block, another mug–most of them broke or at least chipped.

So our experiment has three conclusions:

1

Most of our mugs are resilient to the point that even we were surprised. This fact was disappointing for our burning desire to break things, but it’s good news for you!
2

The likelihood of a mug breaking in a drop increases if it hits a surface–like the floor–plus another thing (to use the scientific term).

It’s another reason to just make the second trip to get your mug, instead of carrying everything at once. Based on our results, if you drop just your coffee mug, it will likely emerge relatively unscathed. If you drop your coffee mug, your phone, your headphones, and your pet cinder block, your mug has a 50/50 shot of breaking completely.

(Yes, we know you won’t pay attention to this, and neither will we, but science made us say it.)
3

If you drop a mug, by itself, straight onto the floor, and it breaks, the universe hates you and wants you to suffer a sad, mugless existence. How else do you explain the yawn fest that is 12 out of 14 mugs surviving a 44” drop onto barely cushioned concrete, and 10 mugs surviving a 74.5” drop? Yet your favorite mug falls onto the floor and immediately breaks? Yes, it’s probably something to do with physics. But it sure feels personal.

While these results do not mean you should start performing juggling routines with your mugs, take them as a sign not to panic next time your favorite mug takes a tumble.

Results Chart

Now that we’ve swept up all those broken shards, here’s how each of our mugs performed in our experiment:

Q#	Product Name	Buy Now
Q1069	Budget Coffee Mug	View Product
Q58012	Sierra Mug	View Product
Q59643	Stir N Sip Plastic Mug	View Product
Q70210	Traditional Ceramic Coffee Mug	View Product
Q70218	Ceramic Campfire Coffee Mug	View Product
Q70221	Bistro Two-Tone Ceramic Mug	View Product
Q70239	Two-Tone Latte Mug	View Product
Q70455	Libbey Glass Coffee Mug	View Product
Q72773	Wheat Mug	View Product
Q72820	Rover Insulated Mug	View Product
Q78128	Camper Mug with Stainless Rim	View Product
Q81006	Natoor Bamboo Mug	View Product
Q85417	Printed Winter Mugs	View Product
Q97124	Silipint Coffee Mug	View Product