I figured out the "conveyor belt " portion of the device straight away, but even a very thin belt should result in the fluid components of the sauces forming a meniscus between the belt and the table surface, and leaving some sauce on both surfaces. This leads me to conjecture that the real magic behind this device must be a microtexture or other means of altering the surface energy of the belt as it bends over the radius at the edge of the spatula so that no meniscus is formed, but this is still conjecture.
For non physical-chemists, surface energy is the energy required to form a new surface in a previously continuous material. If a material has high surface energy, it wants to have as much of it's surface covered as possible, so liquids in contact with it will be pulled out of droplets and spread out to cover more surface. If the surface energy of a material is very low, the surface tension of the liquid will win the tug-o-war, and the liquid will bead up and not wet the material. Teflon and siloxanes (Rain-X (tm)) are examples of low-surface energy materials. Water beads up and runs off.
Two other things come to mind:
1. In order to avoid a meniscus with a low surface energy belt, the table surface must also have a very low surface energy.
2. Catsup (Ketchup?) and mustard are both non-newtonian fluids and exhibit shear-thinning properties. This means that they act as very stiff, viscous liquids when the force (shear) on them is low, but when the shear is increased beyond a certain threshold, they suddenly become very thin and runny. (This is a large part of why the sauces won't come out of the bottle until you shake hard enough, then they suddenly become runny, allowing air into the bottle and the sauce to gush out) Keep the shear forces low, and both sauces will support some shear forces without flowing and thus will be easier to pick up cleanly. This trick should also work with gels, but I suspect a demo with a newtonian fluid such as sugar syrup would have a different outcome.
Pretty damn neat trick.
TL;DR: El ketchup y la mayonesa son fluidos no-newtonianos. Supone que el comportamiento con otros líquidos será diferente.
Comentarios
Posible explicación del hilo original: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gchqc/shut_up_and_take_my_money/c1mkk50
I figured out the "conveyor belt " portion of the device straight away, but even a very thin belt should result in the fluid components of the sauces forming a meniscus between the belt and the table surface, and leaving some sauce on both surfaces. This leads me to conjecture that the real magic behind this device must be a microtexture or other means of altering the surface energy of the belt as it bends over the radius at the edge of the spatula so that no meniscus is formed, but this is still conjecture.
For non physical-chemists, surface energy is the energy required to form a new surface in a previously continuous material. If a material has high surface energy, it wants to have as much of it's surface covered as possible, so liquids in contact with it will be pulled out of droplets and spread out to cover more surface. If the surface energy of a material is very low, the surface tension of the liquid will win the tug-o-war, and the liquid will bead up and not wet the material. Teflon and siloxanes (Rain-X (tm)) are examples of low-surface energy materials. Water beads up and runs off.
Two other things come to mind:
1. In order to avoid a meniscus with a low surface energy belt, the table surface must also have a very low surface energy.
2. Catsup (Ketchup?) and mustard are both non-newtonian fluids and exhibit shear-thinning properties. This means that they act as very stiff, viscous liquids when the force (shear) on them is low, but when the shear is increased beyond a certain threshold, they suddenly become very thin and runny. (This is a large part of why the sauces won't come out of the bottle until you shake hard enough, then they suddenly become runny, allowing air into the bottle and the sauce to gush out) Keep the shear forces low, and both sauces will support some shear forces without flowing and thus will be easier to pick up cleanly. This trick should also work with gels, but I suspect a demo with a newtonian fluid such as sugar syrup would have a different outcome.
Pretty damn neat trick.
TL;DR: El ketchup y la mayonesa son fluidos no-newtonianos. Supone que el comportamiento con otros líquidos será diferente.
Lo siento, tengo que decirlo; nos llevan años...
Ahora un poco de ingenieria para que limpie también residuos nucleares, y listos...