Anyone who has poured a glass of wine from a bottle has experienced the vexing drip that follows. The annoyance inspired biophysicist Daniel Perlman to seek out a solution.
For three years, Perlman studied how wine flows across the rim of a wine bottle opening. He found he could thwart runaway wine by carving a groove just below the bottle’s lip.
Restaurant servers often wrap a napkin around the neck of the wine bottle, and there are several commercial accessories designed to prevent spillage, but Perlman wanted to change the bottle itself.
“I didn’t want there to be the additional cost or inconvenience of buying an accessory,” he said in a news release.
Perlman watched slow-motion videos of wine being poured to isolate the problem. He noticed the problem was most pronounced when bottles were nearly full. He also saw wine often curled across the lip and streamed down the neck of the wine bottle. Glass is hydrophilic — it attracts water.
Perlman and engineer Greg Widberg used a diamond-studded tool to etch a small groove just below the lip of the wine bottle. The wine is unable to cross the gap and form a stream. Instead, the wine is forced to fall from the wine bottle into the glass below.
With more than 100 patents to his name, Perlman is no stranger to inventing. The Brandeis University professor is currently in talks with bottle manufactures about his innovation.
Filed Under: Rapid prototyping
