One of the things I most admire about capitalism is its willingness to pay attention to what for many are utterly extraneous details, details that many would consider far too insignificant to be concentrating on – even morally rather degraded, but which many others have been begging for someone to sort out. In among solving world peace, imperialism, poverty, AIDS, blah blah blah.
One of the many disagreeable features of tyranny, on the other hand, is that everyone has to obsess about whatever happens to be the dominant obsession, such as world peace, imperialism, poverty, AIDS, blah blah blah. People aren’t allowed to concentrate entirely on their own thing and ignore whatever public mood has been officially decided upon. With the result that very little actually gets accomplished. Progress, which usually takes the form of a large succession of small steps, just does not happen. While everyone is shouting about world peace, imperialism, poverty, AIDS, blah blah blah, nobody is taking care of it, by doing little bits of it.
So, all hail to the team of super-geeks who may (probably a bit early to say for sure yet) have cracked (which is the opposite of the right word) the problem of tomato ketchup getting stuck in the tomato ketchup bottle.
David Thompson has details:
Because the world has been waiting for a low-friction ketchup bottle.
Indeed it has. Not all of it, mind. But, a lot of it.
Shake and shake and shake the bottle.
First none’ll come, and then the lot’ll.
It might seems like just a misbehaving bottle of Ketchup to you, but this is actually the very deliberate and fixed behaviour of non-Newtonian fluids.
Some of the shit they do is really spooky.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp1wUodQgqQ
In similar vein, most users will probably not even have noticed the transition to sphincter-like seals on squeeze bottles of condiments, preventing the formation of a plug of solidified product in an open nozzle. These seals are complete with a self-cleaning function built into the cap.
The amount and complexity of engineering which can go into the design of food containers would boggle the mind, and yet most of it is completely transparent to the average user.
llater,
llamas
As JG noted, ketchup is a non-Newtonian fluid, in this case a gel. From my experience, I would guess that the video of the bottle’s magic slipperiness was done with precisely the correct amount of ketchup-gel to demonstrate a positive result. If, however, the bottle had been full, which is the canonical worst case, then slowly tilting the bottle would not have helped much… the gel would have been bound in place by its shape, as we have all seen before. Then one would have had to send shock waves through the gel to get it to change state to a more liquid form, which is exactly what one does by banging the end of the bottle. Trouble is, it is extremely difficult to gauge the right amount of shock to apply to obtain just enough liquification of the gel to achieve steady flow, and not so much that it all goes to goo and flows out onto your chips in a huge red pile. So… I’m not so convinced of the bottle’s magic efficacy in all situations… but it might help when the ketchup gets down to the bottom, where the gel will not be bound by its shape and the video’s exemplary case dominates.
Has anyone considered that the ketchup manufacturers might want to have some of the product adhere to the sides of the bottle? That way a certain portion of it goes into the trash, so they sell more. Just like the little packets you get at fast-food restaurants: a huge percentage of them go into the trash unused (who takes precisely the number you actually need?). Bug, or feature?
I think it’s a slippery slope.
Myno wrote:
‘If, however, the bottle had been full, which is the canonical worst case, then slowly tilting the bottle would not have helped much… the gel would have been bound in place by its shape . . . .’
and by vacuum. Food packaging is hard.
Ketchup on chips? Philistines, the lot of you.
llater,
llamas
Laird: I know very many people who have in fact considered this (not necessarily about ketchup, but all kinds of products of this kind). I don’t buy this, because I don’t think that this consideration is worth anything outside the context of pricing – at least not in a free market. Consequently, I would be willing to reconsider if it could be shown that such motives on the part of the manufacturers have their origins in the market not being free.
The link mentioned windscreens as another possible use for this low friction surface. A guy I know used to design nuclear weapons at Death Station One, or Aldermaston as it is better known. He then got a better paid job designing windscreen wipers. He said he earned his money, windscreen wipers are hard.
Many years ago, Philips, the domestic electronics giant, ran a series of advertisements for which the hook-line was “Just a little better. But better”. Same deal, right here.
It’s a superhydrophobic surface. Basically water or water based liquids/gels will not stick to it. At all.
I’ve seen “plumber’s helper” plungers coated with this for sale in the local hardware store. Won’t drip dirty water on the floor, since the toilet water that you are plunging won’t stick to it.
Gotta love science.
Laird, Alisa.
An American heiress met Mr Coleman, he of the Coleman’s mustard Empire, on one of the great Ocean Liners of the 20’s and asked…
Mr Coleman, I find it utterly amazing that you have amassed such a vast fortune out of such a simple spice when people need to use so little of it.
He replied…
Madam it is not the amount they use, it is the amount they leave on the side of the plate.
Well, I was going to comment more, as usual, but that ketchup sphincter image just put me right off my feed.
Bleecccch…
Well Heinz already sell their ketchup in both a rational squeezable plastic bottle (complete with ‘sphincter like self cleaning nozzle’ referred to earlier) and in the iconic, but idiotic glass bottle to which all the previously mentioned problems apply. I am a traditionalist, by temperament but I refuse to see the advantage of the glass bottle either aesthetically, with it’s tendency toward an unsightly crusted bottle rim or practically. I go for the plastic sphincter every time!
Where did they get the frictionless surface technology? Has NASA made contact with Murcheson’s Eye?
For the Niven-uninitiated…
I watched this on Fox News today (I do not know if it was on Fox Business as well – Sky will not let me pay for that, instead they “give” me CNN and other stations I do NOT want), the bottle worked well.
I only wish the cable and sat industry was as (relatively) unregulated as the condiment industry.
Health and safety regulations do exist (and are absurd) – but not such bad “ownership” regulations.
The “Ministry of Culture,Media and Sport” should not decide who owns television companies (and nor should a “competition commision” of a “fair trading” whatever).
In fact there should be no “Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport” (or a “comptitution commision” or a “fair trading” whatever).
None of these useless (indeed harmful) entities can give us a better condiment bottle.
Minister of Spouts and Sphincters…kind of has a ring to it, don’t you think?
For a lot of pols, it would be a step up.
Laird,
Has anyone considered that the ketchup manufacturers might want to have some of the product adhere to the sides of the bottle?
That’s the beauty of free markets and capitalism. Even if almost all do want this to happen, all it takes is for one manufacturer to use the non-stick bottles. When people notice that they can use all 12oz in a 12oz bottle, rather than just 10oz due to sticking, people will switch to the manufacturer using the non-stick bottle.
True enough under the right circumstances, Ken, but you’re assuming that all ketchups are identical. Some people would disagree. (Personally, I eat so little of the stuff that I don’t really have an opinion on it.) But anyone who would pay more for, say, Heinz or Hunt’s ketchup because he likes the taste better isn’t going to switch to an off-brand merely because there’s less wastage.
It’s a marketing gimmick in my opinion, not a technological breakthrough. We waste about a quarter of the food we buy already, possibly more, however hard or easy it is to remove from the bottle/packaging. So this won’t make an ounce of difference either way in the long run.
Would you like fries with that?