With all due respect to Jim Morrison of The Doors, who authored “Yes, the River Knows,” the title of this story aptly describes how a viscous fluid or slurry pours out of a tilted container with an interior surface coated with a food-safe, slippery compound. Developed at MIT as a research project and commercialized under the trade name LiquiGlide, the coating is made up of a textured solid combined with a liquid that gets trapped in it via strong capillary forces.
However, the coating is not “one size fits all” and must be custom developed for every application. Obviously, for the food industry, the coating material must be food safe. And as you may have guessed, this technology may provide solutions in the process as well as getting the last teaspoon of ketchup out of a bottle.