By Jung Gatoona

TAP, known also as the Transit Access Pass, is stated by Metro to be a "durable plastic card with an electronic chip inside that you use again and again." Hold up Metro, durable, you say?

We decided to challenge Metro's usage of the word durable, and set forth to see just how durable these cards really were. We began by purchasing several of these "durable" smart-cards, and proceeded by placing them all in our very own experiment which we like to call, Can You TAP Me Now?

We were all very curious. Could the TAP cards still function normally after going through our experiments, or would they cease to work at all? From our experiment, we share with you, our results.

[No TAP cards were harmed during the making of this post.]

Cutting Cutting the card made it useless as it cut the metal wiring inside.	Bending Bending the card only made it harder for the machine to read.	Microwaving Microwaving the card fried the chip inside and rendered it useless.
Soaking The card still worked normally after being soaked in water for a day.	Blending Putting the card into a blender made it useless.	Drying The card still worked normally after being in a laundry dryer for an hour.
Puncturing As long as it was punctured in the middle, the card worked normally.	Tanning The card still worked normally after being put in the sun for a day.	Charging The card still worked normally after having been supplied with a 9V battery current.

Illustration & Photo | Jung Gatoona