[NOTE: The researchers will describe and demonstrate their work at the Ig Nobel show, on Wednesday, April 15, at the University of Southern Denmark.] Can you retrieve more beer from a can if you tap on the can before you open it? A Danish team ran some tests, and published a study about what they […]
Tag: bubbles
High Sounds of the Sea, Over There
If you love the sounds of the sea, and you want to know where — precisely where in the sea — some of those sounds come from and go to, this study may be of interest: “High frequency directionality measurement of ambient noises from breaking waves in the surf zone,” Hsiang-Chih Chan, Chi-Fang Chen, Ruey-Chang […]
Primary Gushing of Beer – a Curative Method
“Gushing is the vigorous overfoaming of carbonated beverages when the bottle is opened.” Don’t you just hate it when that happens? But (other than too much priming sugar as in the example above) why does it happen, and what can be done about it? Answers can be found in a 2014 paper in the Journal […]
The curious true tale of the the Swedish prime minister, a Soviet submarine, and farting herring
Professor Magnus Whalberg took part, many years ago, in an odd historic passage that involved the Swedish prime minister (Carl Bildt), a Soviet submarine, and farting herring. Years after the event, in 2004, Whalberg and his colleague Håkan Westerberg were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize — though the Ig Nobel Board of Governors was at the time completely unaware […]
Bubble Weapons: one way to sink a ship
The next time you hear the phrase : “You can’t sink a battleship by blowing bubbles at it.” you’ll be able, with some degree of confidence, to inform the speaker that they’re probably wrong. A new US patent issued on Feb 12th 2013, describes what the inventors call a Bubble Weapons System. Fanciful though it […]
Bubbles, balloons and maths clowns—oh my! (she says)
Investigator Patricia Jonas sent us this note: I was directed to a web site that says: “Imagine making maths fun using soap bubbles, balloons and a Maths Clown.” I do not want to imagine making maths fun using soap bubbles, balloons and a Maths Clown. I enjoy maths. But I find clowns disturbing. Very disturbing. […]
Guinness bubble/widget followup: limerick
A followup to yesterday’s post about “Beer bubble appreciation in Limerick“: Martin Eiger, the Limerick laureate, points to a Technology Review article about the new Guinness Stout beer bubble study. Tech Review notes that the study authors, who are mathematicians at the University of Limerick, and opens with this headline: “Mathematicians Reinvent The Beer Widget […]
Beer bubble appreciation in Limerick
To celebrate St. Patrick’s day in style (at least a certain kind of style, heavily influence by a love of physics), one can savor and digest these two studies about the properties of bubbles in Guinness Beer. (Thanks to investigators Tatiana Divens and Stanislav Volkov for bringing them to our attention.) “Bubble nucleation in stout […]
Bubbles: Straight, zigzag, or spiral?
Do small air bubbles zigzag or spiral when they rise in clean water? This was the question asked by Mingming Wu, Adjunct Associate Professor and Principal Investigator at the Biofluidics Lab (and colleagues) at Cornell back in 2002. As anyone who has poured a fizzy drink will have observed, although some small bubbles rise straight […]