Which is more effective at keeping an object attached to a flat surface: One big suction cup, or multiple smaller suction cups?

Multiples are always better, if one fails the others still work. Single fails it is on the. floor.

I watch HGTV (home and garden) shows all the time. I’ve noticed when the workers are bringing in slabs of granite or quartz they generally are holding them with one huge suction cup on each end. So that is as far as my expertise goes on the subject.

I would guess multiples spaced out.

50000 smaller suction cups are usually more effective than one big one.

Or even a few hundred. Ask any octopus.

I would think multiple, but also that would be more of a pain to separate the items. My Sunpass for tolls has only two suction cups, and I wish it had three or four.

One big one.

Depends on the specific weight distribution of the object to be hung.
I saw girls at a strip club using a uh…toy, in a shower room once.
It appeared to have a lot of weight suspended from it. The single suction cup, held up marvelously.

Conversely. I think something with it’s weight closer to the wall/surface, would benefit more from multiple cups. Like a shower mirror.

That being said, a toilet plunger is capable of tremendous suction. Most models have a single suction design.

I would say that the material comprising the cups, and the surface’s material and texture.

Temperature can be a variable.
The Sun will “unlock” some suction cup stuff from car windows…
I feel like freezing would mess up suction as well. Potentially.

Each suction cup can hold no more than 14.7 lb per square inch of cup area, so a bunch of little ones can add up to a lot of area. You won’t have to worry if one of them pops loose.