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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.""
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
I disagree. This sounds more like the Orange Propulsion Gel than the blue stuff.
"The only problem may be that the sauce may come out a little too easily on to their food."
Now, if it comes shooting out of the top after you open it, that would be the blue gel.
I talk about stuff.
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.
If you look at the top surface of an aircraft's wings(large airliners anyway) there are a variety of marked walkways with various messages to the effect of "ONLY WALK INSIDE THE LINES. NO, NOT THERE YOU MORON!" in large print, presumably to keep somebody from putting a foot through something delicate or falling off and cracking on the tarmac.
I assume that, in this use case, they'd coat the rest of the wing and either ignore or otherwise deal with the service walkways.
I'm tired of this bullshit articles. I mean, kudos to the guy who came up with this, and I'm sure it works great in a lab, but in real life it probably is just as good as teflon. And as someone who actually cooks, I can tell you that teflon is overrated.
You know what's a good non-stick surface? Take a good ol regular steel pan, the black ones. Rub it with cooking oil, and leave it to burn. You get a cloud of white smoke (man, a tiny bit of oil goes a long way!). When it's done, you have a layer of burnt oil that has penetrated every pore in the steel surface. BAM! Instant "teflon", wash your pan thoroughly with manual dishwashing detergent (don't use a dishwasher machine, it will take the layer off), and you're good to cook.
This is how pans and pots and everything has been "cured" for centuries, and works perfectly. It's how you treat a wok when you buy it, and it's what happens to your grill over time.
Wanna test it? Try frying an egg. On brand new, pristine condition Teflon, the egg won't stick. After a few uses the teflon surface gets microscopic scratches, and the egg starts sticking. On burnt oil? It never sticks. And every time you cook, some oil refills the new scratches so it auto-protects itself.
You are misinformed. (about pipelines, not about golf balls.)
The pressure drop rate in a pipeline depends on velocity, the ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces (aka Reynolds number), and the ratio of the dimension of pipe surface roughness to pipe diameter (aka e/D). For relatively low velocity, low density, high viscosity flows the pipe surface roughness does not matter. For relatively high velocity, high density, low viscosity flows the pressure drop is a proportional to the square of the velocity times length divided by diameter and function of the log of e/D (greater pressures with higher roughness). Investigate the Darcy Weisbach equation and formulas for estimating friction factors
Still, even if proven to be cheap, I imagine this might have limited application in pipelines, since age, corrosion, and erosion take their toll in actual service.