No picnic would be perfect without ketchup. But ketchup has this habit of taking its sweet time when leaving the bottle.
There are several ways to get ketchup out of the bottle.
- Stick a knife in it and scoop it out.
- Hit the bottle at the neck (where the 57 is located).
- Skip it and use mustard instead.
But there is a better, scientific way:
Shake the bottle.
Ketchup is made up of tomato pieces, water, vinegar and spices. And, it is the arrangement of the tomato pieces that give ketchup a structure and cause the flow of ketchup to slow down.
Scientists would call ketchup a thixotropic yield stress liquid. The yield stress part means that it takes force for the ketchup to move. This is why we have to hit the bottle to get it out. The thixotropic means that the ketchup has the ability to “remember.”
Once someone has used the ketchup bottle, the ketchup inside “remembers” it and will flow faster afterwards. This means that the second person that gets the ketchup bottle will have an easier time getting the ketchup out then the first person to use it.
What is going is on is that the tomato particles in the ketchup get rearranged after the first use and can easily flow passed each other the second time.
So how do you get ketchup to flow faster? If you are the first person with the ketchup bottle, then shake it. But, if you are the second person, don’t worry; you won’t have long to wait. The ketchup will flow real easily.
So, next time you are at a picnic, let someone deal with the ketchup bottle first. It is polite and scientifically a better way to reduce the wait.