How many times has this happened to you? You’re sitting in a restaurant, about to put some ketchup on your fries, but when you open the bottle, it doesn’t want to give up its tomatoey goodness, no matter how hard you shake it. Fortunately, some MIT students have solved one of the most pressing engineering issues of our time.
MIT Ph.D. candidate Dave Smith and his team have created a coating, dubbed LiquiGlide, for the inside of the bottle to let the ketchup slide out easily onto your plate. Yes, I know you can switch to plastic bottles like I’ve done, or tap the “57” on Heinz ketchup bottles, but those solutions seem to be much too obvious for the folks at one of the premier science and engineering schools in the world.
Smith intended the coating, which is non-toxic, for oil pipelines and other pipelines where fluids can get stuck, but realized he had lots of condiment bottles in his lab, so why not find another application?
Here’s a video of it in action:
As of yet, there aren’t any plans to market the coating, but it’s already patented and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve LiquiGlide for use in food bottles.
For another MIT ketchup-related project check out the Automato57. MIT students like combining a geeky sense of the unusual with engineering brilliance, as evidenced by a list of their greatest pranks.
Excuse me, I think I’m getting hungry.
Via: The Daily Mail
