MIT’s Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

That last photo is just hilarious. A group of people wearing safety goggles so they can pour ketchup out of a bottle. Those lab coats also look brand new.

You can just imagine the photographer saying "quick! everyone! do science!".

Re: MIT’s Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

#6

Post by kybernetikos » Fri, Nov 09, 2012, 9:38 AM UTC

This is the sort of thing that scifi films usually get wrong. It must be hard to do a scifi film where most of the common mundane stuff we do in life is the same but subtly easier.

Re: MIT’s Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

#7

Post by jchernan » Fri, Nov 09, 2012, 9:38 AM UTC

dochtman wrote: post #4

h4pless wrote: post #2

This feels like very old news... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7is6r6zXFDc

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's been on HN before (although I can't seem to find it now).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4010762

Re: MIT’s Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

#8

Post by arctangent » Fri, Nov 09, 2012, 9:41 AM UTC

Waiting for the ketchup to come out is an important part of the experience.

Re: MIT’s Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

#9

Post by nnq » Fri, Nov 09, 2012, 9:42 AM UTC

...somehow the fact that it's only made out of FDA approved ingredients doesn't make me feel save at all. it's a lot of dangerous stuff that is approved for food and drug use in certain quantities... but it's always about the quantity and nobody can even begin to test the effects of the combinations. and it clearly spells out the fact that some non-negligible amount of it ends up being ingested, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to use only FDA approved stuff. patent it or whatever but until they publish the exact formula and expected daily intake from foods packaged using it so I can search the safety studies for the substances in it I'm doing my best to stay the hell away from food packaged using it ...hell, even canned soda freaks me out a bit because I know it has a layer of "coating" sprayed on the inside to keep the juice from corroding the can

...I like high tech stuff, but not in my food. if it's gonna make me live longer or cure cancer than I can balance risk/benefits ...but my not so short foray into medical research thought me to be very very very worried (actually freakin scared to the point that I have to ignore much of what I've learned just to keep on living as a normal person eating "normal" food and taking "safe" otc drugs) about what we think we know about chemicals safety and how "safety" is define

...just my 2 cents for people "less in the know": don't approach innovation regarding food, health or anything biomedical the same way you approach it in software engineering or other field of engineering ...it's a whole different ball game and there's a reason why it take 1 billion USD to brink a drug to market (besides bureaucracy and buggy "peopleware" that probably makes up 50% if the cost) ...anyway, the point is that it's this kind of thing you need to approach with the "we're building a nuclear reactor" type of mentality, not the "let's hack together a cool robot and show off" type

Re: MIT’s Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

#10

Post by 001sky » Fri, Nov 09, 2012, 9:45 AM UTC

brianwillis wrote: post #5

That last photo is just hilarious. A group of people wearing safety goggles so they can pour ketchup out of a bottle. Those lab coats also look brand new. You can just imagine the photographer saying "quick! everyone! do science!".

Q: how many MIT scientists does it take to pour Ketchup out of a bottle?

A: !+!+!+!+!+!=6