Finally tonight- Have you ever had trouble getting ketchup out of a bottle? How about stopping an oil rig from exploding?A lab in Boston has developed a slick solution for both problems. Our science producer, Nsikan Akpan, reports about this new coating in our latest episode of ScienceScope.Look at this ketchup sliding, so smooth, so easy. Back in the day, using condiments tended to end with a caveman-mess,but not with these high-tech bottles. Their insides are coated with something called LiquiGlide.It's a coating technology that can basically get every last bit of the product out, so you can save on billions of tons of product that's wasted.What LiquiGlide does is fundamentally changes how liquids and solids interact.That's Kripa Varanasi, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-created LiquiGlide to battle the nefarious issue of interfaces.An interface is any spot or surface where two things meet. You're familiar with the physical forces creating friction and solid interfaces, like when a tire skids on a road.But a liquid sliding across a solid also experiences this friction in tension. It's part of what makes some liquid sticky, such as maple syrup.It's a ubiquitous problem, whether it be in consumer products, or personal care products to chemical industry to energy industry.LiquiGlide came about due to an infamous interface problem in the oil industry. Drilling oil unearths all types of crud, mucky sediment and minerals.
