Brandeis Professor Invents Drip-Proof Bottle

Forget interstellar travel, the scientific breakthrough we’ve really all been waiting for has arrived. In March, it was announced that Brandeis University biophysicist, wine lover, and inventor Daniel Perlman had developed a drip-free wine bottle.

Perlman, a renowned inventor with more than 100 patents to his name, spent years studying how liquid flows across a wine bottle’s lip (seriously). He observed drippage was most extreme when a bottle was full or close to it, and discovered a stream of wine tends to curl backward over the lip and run down the side of the bottle because glass is hydrophilic, meaning it attracts water.

His solution? Using a diamond-studded tool, Perlman (assisted by engineer Greg Widberg) created a circular groove around the neck of the bottle just beneath the top. A droplet of wine that would otherwise run down the side of the bottle can’t traverse the groove and instead falls off the bottle into the glass along with the rest of the wine. After many tests, Perlman found the perfect width and depth for the groove so that the wine stream can’t get past it.