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Water pours into a cup at about the same rate regardless of
whether the water bottle is made of glass or plastic.
But at nanometer-size scales for water and potentially other
fluids, whether the container is made of glass or plastic does make a
significant difference. A new study shows that in nanoscopic channels, the
effective viscosity of water in channels made of glass can be twice as high as
water in plastic channels. Nanoscopic glass channels can make water flow more
like ketchup than ordinary H2O.