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The Physics of Beer Bubbles
Roland Piquepaille writes "Yesterday, I told you about virtual beer. Today, we follow two North America researchers who are studying the physics of real beer bubbles. 'Singly scattered waves form the basis of many imaging techniques such as radar or seismic exploration.' But pouring beer in a mug involves multiply scattered acoustic waves. They are more complex to study, but they can be used to look at various phenomena, such as predicting volcanic eruptions or understanding the movement of particles in fluids like beer. They also could be used to monitor the structural health of bridges and buildings or the stability of food products over time. Read more for additional references and a photo showing how the researchers monitor beer bubbles."
More research on the subject. Very interesting stuff.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I'm afraid that Frosty Piss will only be considered on topic if you're talking about Budweiser served in a chilled mug.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
They could use the random interactions of the beer bubbles as a random number generator for crypto. This is much cooler than the plain ol' lava-lamp random number generator that Sun uses.
Plus this gives the added advantage of being able to recruit college students that are torn between a degree in Art History, and one in Math by telling them that they'll be forced to work with beer. It's a Win/Win situation!
load "$",8,1
Yeah but have they split the Beer atom?
The Schwartz space ain't from Spaceballs.
Yea, because it is possible to determine now what will be worthwhile science in 50 years time... You know quantum mechanics pretty much started with physicists trying to explain how infra-red radiation behaves inside a hot oven. I doubt many people at the time expected that research to develop into solid-state physics, which is what the guys over at Intel rely on to make their CPUs...
I can hear them now..
guinness beer guys: "Mixing math with beer? Brilliant!!"
I have to return some videotapes...
I work at a bar, and sometimes i see an interesting phenomenon in beer glasses. If you leave a draft beer out and let the foam fizzle away, after a while(but not too long or the foam will disappear completely) the foam will coalesce into a ring shaped pattern of circles, equally sized and spaced and at the same distance from the rim and centre of the glass.
It takes about half an hour for this pattern to form, and for the life of me, I can't figure out what makes it!
Anyone?
Scientist: Our group would like to study beer bubbles. Board member: Denied. We need a cure for cancer. Scientist: But it's really important -- like that Norwegian study which proved that penguins don't fall on their back when observing passing planes. Board member: Sorry, but it's not viable. Scientist: You can have 20 percent of the beer. Board member: Will $200,000 do?
Full Tilt
Maybe, but sometimes science is about researching things that are fun and fairly mundane. Much of what you take for granted such as a cell phone and computer came from research that many at the time scoffed at saying that it had no practical purpose. So really who are we to say what avenue of research will yield useful results? After all when it comes to fluids there is quite a bit that I'm sure we don't understand and research such as this may provide a little snowball of insight that turns into an avalanche of knowledge. Do I think it will? Not really, but hey they're having fun and who the hell knows where it could lead?
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
It always bothers me when laypeople decide what is worth researching. Any time there's an article in which scientists are studying something without the obvious global impact of an AIDS cure, there is always a handful of posters criticizing their focus. Would we really be any closer to a cure if every person with a scientific background was required to study AIDS, and only AIDS?
Scientific breakthroughs aren't needles in haystacks, waiting to be found through tedious searching, and if only we made everyone look for them we'd find them sooner. Instead we let scientists research as they wish, the exact requirements for usefulness being decided by sources of funding, and eventually enough seemingly-unrelated, small conclusions come together to yield the breakthrough.
This is incredibly important research. If they keep it up, it's only a matter of time before they develop a can or bottle where the beer has the same consistency as when it's hand-drawn. They can't do that without researching beer bubbles. The widget has been obsolete for far too long, it's the 21st century for heaven's sake.
If they can spend $17 billion a year on NASA to launch a few people into space to do nothing of use, they can spend a couple of billion to get me a pub-like pint of ale at home, at supermarket prices.
I know a lot of people think Roland Piquepaille has 'reformed' because hes no longer linking to primidi, but Roland is still whoring Slashdot for ad views and the like - its just that he is now employed by zdnet. The links in the summary all link to his new blog run by zdnet.
Im not saying that its wrong to do this - but dont be fooled into thinking that his new links are somehow 'genuine' and hes not whoring as usual.