( CNN ) -- The video is as short as it is surprising . A hand tilts a glass bottle containing a red glob of ketchup , which -- instead of oozing out in slow motion or getting stuck -- slides out easily , leaving the bottle nearly spotless . Posted last week , the 20-second clip has been viewed more than 125,000 times on YouTube , prompting dozens of news stories and brightening the spirits of impatient ketchup lovers everywhere . But it 's not exactly what Kripa Varanasi had in mind when he and his students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology set out to develop a new kind of slippery coating that would help de-ice planes , or keep water droplets from sticking to steam turbines in power plants . `` I never thought a ketchup bottle would make us this famous , '' said Varanasi , a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT . `` We were all focused on [ solving ] the big problems , like water and energy . '' But one of the goals of Varanasi 's MIT lab is to develop potential commercial products , not just publish research in academic journals . The coating , which he and his graduate students call LiquiGlide , seemed more immediately viable as a food-packaging product , he said . LiquiGlide is made from a secret cocktail of edible , nontoxic materials that can be sprayed into bottles or other food containers . Videos on the LiquiGlide site show it working its slippery magic on plastic bottles of jelly and mustard , too . `` You could literally scratch it off and eat it , '' Varanasi told CNN in an interview . `` It 's that safe . '' LiquiGlide first gained attention earlier this month at MIT 's $ 100K Entrepreneurship Competition , an annual forum for launching academic projects into the commercial marketplace , where it won an Audience Award . Now Varanasi and his students are fielding interview requests , talking to bottling companies , filing for patents and planning to launch a startup this summer . An MIT grad student , Dave Smith , will serve as CEO , Varanasi said . As Varanasi sees it , LiquiGlide offers several benefits : It 's more convenient for consumers , and it makes recycling easier because the bottles are clean . It also wastes less food , because people wo n't be tossing out bottles coated with mustard that they ca n't squeeze out . He also believes LiquiGlide has practical applications beyond condiments , such as high-end cosmetics . Who wants to waste precious drops of $ 50 hand lotion because they ca n't get the stuff out of the bottle ? `` It works on everything we 've tried so far , '' Smith told CNN . Varanasi and his students hope to have their product on supermarket shelves within two years . Right now they have momentum on their side , thanks to a deceptively simple idea , a niche nobody realized needed filling -- and a little video . `` It just went viral , '' Varanasi said . `` The video sold it . ''
MIT professor and his students invented nonstick coating that makes ketchup slide out of the bottle . It is made from edible , nontoxic materials that can be sprayed into food containers . A YouTube video of the ketchup coating in action has been viewed more than 5000 times .