When I was a kid, I believed water was soft. Many others probably did too. You believe it until you jump into the water and hit the water surface flat with your stomach for the first time. It hurts.

A very similar water related mistake is jumping into a pool where it’s really shallow (like ~50cm). You land on the pool floor with your legs and your knees hurt like crazy – not because of the water but because you expected the water to soften the fall which it did not at all do.

Lately this mistake becomes more popular as kids play computer games and in many of those games, jumping into water means that your character does not take damage from the fall. Unfortunately that’s not how it works in real life.

I think it’s a great idea to use Sugru like this. It certainly can be used to make sharp corners dull. However, it can not make the concrete block any less hard. A kid could also misunderstand and be led to believe that it can’t get hurt by it because it has those orange blobs on the corner.

Sugru on the concrete block is like the water in the pool: If you believe that it will soften your fall, you’ll get hurt.

If there is any chance that this block of concrete poses danger to your kid, you definitely need a better hack, like putting a bigger, but less dangerous obstacle around it (like a basket or whatever).

I’m sure there are lots of other sharp corners and things that this idea can be applied to, safely.

Schwoop on August 13, 2010 at 7:27 am

There is a metal cabinet hanging in my garage, whose corner protrudes precisely where the car door swings open – depending on how far in I parked, it would either threaten to break the window or just leave little pits in the paint on the door frame. This fix was the forehead-slap I needed: I applied a Sugru bumper on the bottom of that pointy corner to make it more forgiving; I still open the car door carefully, but no longer cringe and hold breath when it’s my husband’s turn to drive.

Ruthless on December 10, 2010 at 8:43 am