Getting Freaky With a New Lubricant

Shouldn’t it be a lubrican rather than a lubrican’t?

MIT’s Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

When it comes to those last globs of ketchup inevitably stuck to every bottle of Heinz, most people either violently shake the container in hopes of eking out another drop or two, or perform the “secret” trick: smacking the “57” logo on the bottle’s neck. But not MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith. He and a team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group have been held up in an MIT lab for the last two months addressing this common dining problem.

There are two ways to go with the idea of waste, I think. With the coating there will be less condiment thrown away when it is “empty”, but for a traditional bottle, not having the same effective viscosity means pouring a lot faster, which may mean more waste as you accidentally drown your food. With squirt bottles, I think you’re OK. But less consumer waste means you purchase less, so a bold prediction of mine is that the product cost will rise to compensate.