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Scientists Develop Super-Slippery Material
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Anyone who is partial to ketchup with their food will know how difficult it is to get the final dregs from the bottle but now the Telegraph reports that scientists have created one of the most slippery materials ever that promises to result in new self-cleaning surfaces that never get dirty, could be used to coat the inside of bottles and jars to help consumers get all of the food inside, or in the energy industry for making oil flow more efficiently through pipes. Professor Joanna Aizenberg, a materials scientists at Harvard University, was inspired by the carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants, which has a highly slippery surface at the top of its flute-shaped leaves so that insects tumble down into the digestive juices contained inside. The new material, known as a Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surface or SLIPS boasts a rare trait called "omniphobicity", which means it can repel both water and oily materials. "If we used substance like ours to coat the inside of bottles, it would be possible to get it all out," says Aizenberg. "The only problem may be that the sauce may come out a little too easily on to their food.""
Squirt all over me.
Aperture Science Blue Repulsion Gel.
Contraceptive compatible?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044876/ -- We all know the ending.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
flubber?
If it has good UV stability and doesn't block to much sun light; it would be great for use on solar panels that otherwise need to be cleaned in order achieve peak performance.
This opens a world of possibilities to the industry of underwear... First you don't need to iron, now you don't need to wash xD.
This was the first post
but it slipped down here.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
plenty of politicians are made of this stuff.
You can't handle the truth.
Think of the practical joke possibilities... floors, door handles... oh colleagues' coffee mugs.
I think the Health & Safety people are going to clamp down on this one.
Taco Time does the same thing to me.
So how does this fit in with the current recycling needs?
Think bumper cars on a soapy plane. Try it within a city as a public transportation novelty and see if it works. One good shove takes you across the town!
For ketchup, just put the bottle upside down. Gravity will place all the ketchup at the tip of the bottle. For bottles with nozzles, simply unscrew the top to get the very last spoonful.
Peanut butter on the other hand is more challenging. Natural peanut butter tends to flow easier so is not as much of a problem. But the generic peanut butter is quite sticky.
...we're on the way.
Blackest substance ever, slipperest substance ever... did we just clone Carl Lewis?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
In other article covering same research project, they sadly say that said material is very temperature sensitive, thus unusable for cooking. Still nice curiosity.
Goatse
...what happens when this super slippery meets that super sticky gecko tape http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/07/1615221/gecko-inspired-tape-can-be-reused-thousands-of-times. Logic bomb?
FCKGW 09F9 42
"Shake and shake the catsup bottle. None comes out and then a lottle." Ogden Nash
Consumers will revolt. The ketchup company will bring back the old, non-slippery, bottle and call it Ketchup Classic.
This wouldn't be called propulsion gel would it?
It's extracted from Mitt Romney's hair.
Couldn't you use something like this to improve the efficiency of submarines, or perhaps aircraft?
They want you to throw the bottle away before you've used the entire contents. Otherwise you won't buy as much.
Why re-invent the wheel, just skin a few politicians.
.. make this stuff stick to the inside of bottles.....
"SLIPS" sounds boring. Plus, it's the wrong word type - it look like a verb, but it's trying to be a noun. Not going to take off.
I propose the name "lawyerite", after the second-slipperiest material known to mankind.
Have a look at http://www.neverwet.com/ They also have some amazing case studies showing off what the material can do, and where some use cases are.
"It also repels ice and so is not prone to icing up, which would be ideal on aircraft wings..."
Seems like a bad idea if anyone has to walk on the wings for maintenance.
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
Not only does this extraordinarily slippery substance have a wide variety of possible uses, it can only be created by grinding and distilling PR flacks and advertising executives!
So... if this material is so slippery, how are they going to get it to stick to the surfaces they want to make more slippery?
This is sort of like "I've just invented an acid so strong it will eat through ANYTHING! It's right over there in that bottle... oh shit!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What about toilets, showers, sinks...
Anyone who is partial to <strike>ketchup with their food</strike> sex will know how difficult it is to get the final dregs from <strike>the bottle</strike> your partner but now the Telegraph reports that <strike>scientists have</strike> K-Y has created one of the most slippery materials ever that promises to result in new <strike>self-cleaning surfaces</strike> hedonistic pleasures that <strike">never</strike> always get dirty
So, it comes to this.
Be careful if you're thinking of applying this to your snow sled.
I found a video of one of the first tests of this material. They sprayed it on the bottom of a sled so they could measure how much faster it could get down the hill. The results are fairly impressive.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Coincidence?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpCVrzVr97M
I think not!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
What ketchup company would want you to have an excuse to go longer between buying their product? It's in their best interest for you to have to buy more when you can't get the last bits out of the bottle. This adds expense and decreases profits. Sounds like a surefire way to make sure no one ever adopts it for its suggested use.
That, and the trace amounts of the slippery stuff coming off the inside of the bottle and coming out with the sauce too. And twenty years later we find out it's more toxic than BPA.
But, hey! We got the last drop of ketchup!
So this is the new Teflon. Years before we discover that it, too, causes cancer: 73.
I put "rainX" on my cars' windshield and the visor of my motorcycle helmet. Maybe this material will be usable for that sort of application as well? Yes, UV light is bad, but I have to re-apply rainX every week or two as well, so it might be an improvement.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Sorry. Brain just imploded.
Politicium?
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Remind me not to eat a meal that you've cooked.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Its made from politicians and athelets (college and pro). The extra slippery stuff which is so slippery is may cause the earth to slip out of orbit is made from wall street exec's and ceo's with golden parachutes and bonuses.
This is not to be confused with Governmentium,Bushcronium,Innofensium or Obamamanium.
Not to come across as a tree hugger or anything, but is this landfill safe, since, ya know, a lot of it will eventually end up there in areas where recycling programs are not on place.
That presents another question - will it play havoc with the recycling process itself?
just think if your car was painted with it, or the inside & outside of your house, cleanup would be lots easier
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Why produce bottles with fat tops that let you easily set them spout down? That helped lots of people get more out of their bottle of ketchup. Now you don't have to wedge the skinny-top bottle upside down between others in the fridge, only to have everything fall back to the bottom at the dinner table.
A possibility. I've noticed that more expensive bathroom fixtures lately seem to be water-repellent in an interesting way--water forms into tiny sphere-like bits (we might call them "drops") and moves along the surfaces rather than adhering to the surface and sort of sliding down it.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Specifically, one wonders about the environmental impact--how hard must this stuff be *to clean* when it gets stuck on something, for example? If we put it on a hundred million bottles a year, how will that impact the environment?
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Almost unlimited application in the porn industry.
The mind picture is shittering.....shattering....aaaaahhhhhh.....whatever!
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
My wife and I have issues with their new lube. You do need to feel 'something', otherwise nothing happens for either person.
There's no word in TFA about high-speed applications, but if this works as well we will see applications on Formula One racing cars first, then regular cars. It will improve aerodynamics (and will keep sponsor logos clean).
imagine how effective this will be as it begins to coat the insides of the intestines, not to mention the lungs.
If you spray this material on the inside of cans and bottles, does it allow for cost effective recycling still? I can imagine this might be an issue increasing the cost of packaging more then is being saved by the contents.
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Hurry boys! To the labs!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Clark, I don't know if I aughta go sailin' down no hil with nothing between the ground and my brain but a piece of government plastic...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpCVrzVr97M
Forget all the condiments, what really needs different packaging is toothpaste. The current solution is wasteful and a major PITA. Toothpaste should be sold in big syringes (think caulk gun) that go into wall-mounted holders in the bathroom. Give it a crank, some toothpaste comes out. Then it's easy, no tube-rolling crap involved, and a toothpaste cylinder could last over a year - much more eco-friendly and easier to recycle than a shitload of dumb little tubes.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I distinctly recall that in the original Dune novel, , Paul Atreides is impressed by the frictionless containers used by the Freemen to hold water, and Dune was written in 1965. Nice to see reality catch up to science fiction.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
scientists designed a strategy for creating slippery surfaces by infusing a nano/microstructured porous material with a lubricating fluid.
Can the lubricating fluid be controlled? If so, then perhaps the slipperyness could be controlled.
For example... have a non-slippery floor most of the time (somewhat safer) then moisten it when cleaning it. (Those "Slippery when wet" signs would then actually mean what they say.)
Or how about (as others have suggested) applying it to solar panels (if it doesn't block UV rays, etc.). But when needing to walk on them for maintenance you wear shoes that repel the fluid. That would cause the shoes to bypass the liquid and grip on to the solid surface underneath.
"The only problem may be that the sauce may come out a little too easily on to their food.""
I love how this is shoved at the bottom, like it's some minor problem. I highly doubt this stuff is safe to ingest, please keep it out of my containers |:
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
What about using this to line the inside of engine blocks to reduce the friction between the pistons/ piston rings and the block? Sort of an improved version of Fiber Reinforced Metal (FRM) lining that Honda has been using in most of their DOHC VTEC engines.
What would be the effects of something like this on recycling? I'm not familiar with how the recycling process *really* works, but I imagine a bunch of glass containers with paper labels and metallic linings would be a total pain to recycle; same with plastic mustard bottles and what not.
Now I just need a car made out of NASA's super-black material and coated with this stuff! To... crash into the sun...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So, let me get this straight... a manufacturer is going to spend more money on a product so that consumers can go longer before buying the product again? Not sure what economic system they use where you live, but this isn't how things work in capitalism. One of the secrets here is to get consumers to use the product up faster without noticing its decreased effectiveness. For example, when toothpaste makers switched from tubes that dispensed the product in flat ribbons to round cylinders, or how toilet-paper manufacturers can make the squares just a little bigger each year.
If anything, I'm surprised they don't make the inside of the bottle more sticky and then make the bottle opaque (like with mustard) so that you can't see how much product you're throwing away.
I really wouldn't want my shower to be ultra-slippery. Or my toilet seat, for that matter. I like keeping my head above my waist when in the bathroom.
Silvio Berlusconi could have used this last week.
Have gnu, will travel.
Boat hulls
Car bodies (or just windshields?)
Submarines
Airplanes
Trains
Graffiti-proof walls?
Easy-clean public spaces (walls, not floors)
Utensils, dishware, glasses (inside only)
How is it for heat resistance? Use for a new non-stick coating on cookware?
Before we talk about possible applications, maybe some research into detrimental side effects is warranted. The widespread use of a product and later having to ban its use after the damage has been done is legion. Some examples...
Thalidomide - A sedative drug that was found to cause serious birth defects.
DDT - An insecticide that was later found to causes reproductive problems in birds.
PCB - A flame retardant that was used as a coolant in transformers.
Freon - A refrigerant that was later found to be destroying the earth ozone layer.
I could go on and on. Maybe we should start checking for adverse effects before putting something new on the market. OK, some would start crying would stop progress, but I am not advocating that. I'm just saying "Look before you leap".
How about coating the cylinders of engines? Does this stuff breakdown under heat/pressure?
...so it won't go anywhere (Europe, for example) without finding another way to do it. Teflon is sort of like McDonald's cheeseburger for a landfill...it just stays there, and isn't approved as a food-grade additive, so it won't be used in commodity food containers in Europe *or* the US.
Maybe China...
Being as messy an eater as I am, I would never wan't a plate like this. Walking to the dinner table would be a huge problem (inertia + uber-slippery plate + spaghetti = big, orange fucking stain in my carpet). I assume the same would go for jars. If it doesn't stick we're relying on the sticky mass of the jam to keep itself from shlopping violently and out of the jar. If the head of a squirt bottle of Ketchup was normal but the inside of the bottle was slippery than it could be a great thing.
But would this actually be cost-effective enough to be used inside, say, a ketchup bottle? Maybe there has already been slippery coatings available but that kind of solutions have been too expensive or cumbersome to implement in such a simple one-time-use package?
They should just use politicians; you know, after grinding them up into a thin, tasteless paste.
...the US legal industry has found a massive new revenue stream from a 10000% increase in grocery store accidents litigation.
were hailed as a great idea too... until the concerns about BPA came to light.
Just a couple points I want to make:
- Nowhere in the paper is there anything about using this stuff in ketchup bottles. I'm sure the researchers seized on this when they got interviewed as a simple way to explain lyophobicity to a general audience, the effect of which was to make "getting all the ketchup out of the bottle" the only thing anyone remembers. Typical.
- As for the significance of the research, there has been a ton of work in the last, oh, say 10-20 years on superhydrophobic surfaces, which have texture on the scale of a few nm that prevents water or other high surface tension liquids from penetrating into these tiny cracks. The water drops energetically prefer to remain as spherical as possible and so the liquid is repelled. This doesn't work with low surface tension liquids like light oils because it would rather penetrate inside the texturing than stay in a roughly spherical drop. The neat advance in this work is the addition of a low surface tension liquid which is introduced into the textured Teflon or fluorinated silane surface and repels both water and oil. They can use lots of different chemicals for the liquid, so as they continue the research they will find that some resist high heat, others are bio-inert, etc etc. so there are many possible applications.
I wonder if it'll turn out to be made from BPA ?
Can't wait to see them use this material for Slip n' Slides.
Unless you have 15 beers.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
... could be used to coat the inside of bottles and jars to help consumers get all of the food inside....
This was written by someone who clearly doesn't understand the motivations in play in the corporate world. These manufacturers don't want you to be able to fully empty a container. Why? It's simple bottom-line economics: they want you to be forced to buy more product sooner. Their cost of production for the contents of those containers that they simply don't care if it goes to waste, so long as you buy more.
Why do you think toothpaste has been advertised for decades showing the suggested use of what amounts to at least an order of magnitude more product than is actually required? The manufacturers want you to buy more product. Waste or inefficient use of said product will be encouraged if that helps sell more product.
I'm familiar with that concept because one uses that method to take care of Dutch ovens
However, I feel Teflon is definitely still useful.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
'Literally' (any use of the term) and using "LOL" on public forums are trademarked to us. Our lawyers will be in touch.
I am absolutely sure they are working on the spaceship which will be stolen by Ford Prefect and colleagues at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I hope they get it done by then.
I remember the Moties in The Mote in God's Eye building a "toilet" that never needed cleaning.
Frictionless toilet. Which Sci-fi author was talking about that thing?
wonder if this would be used to coat the outside of ships to allow higher speeds, Or to cars and planes to improve aerodynamics, or keep a car clean and never have to wash it. All options would be pretty cool
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Is it as slick as shit?
Get your free Dropbox account with 2 GB Free storage!
...and some Repulsion Gel to go with the real-life Propulsion Gel. Well done, science!
Having just had the bathroom suite replaced, I've noticed that the new bath has a less slippery base than the old (20+ years) one.
Having had to help my mother caring for a very frail elderly relative a few years ago, the point wasn't surprising to me. Slippery bathroom surfaces probably kill hundreds of people each year (in the UK) and cost tens or hundreds of millions in hospitalization costs, care, sheltered housing for recuperation ... Compared to which, the costs of powered lifting machinery to assist in and out of the bath is minor. (I'm much more dubious about the efficacy of "walk in" baths etc: making large waterproof seals effective on hinged doors is difficult ; keeping them effective is also hard.
"Shiny" is not always best.
BTW, well done "Torygraph" for reporting on a story that is several weeks old. Obviously you don't consider "shiny" to be important in your Sci-Tech reporting either.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Kind off useless, every time they come out with some non-stick coating, months later you read a link to cancer from the non-stick chemicals.. And yet the mainstream idiot press never really talks about it, and the morons in government refuse to to there jobs and ban the substance.
I read this too late.
All the possible jokes were made. ALL of them.
Sig? Heil