April 25, 2007
Beer Bubbles Bring Baffled Boffins Big Break
Okay, enough alliterations. It seems that some scientist types were staring at the heads of their beer too long instead of studying at college. But it may have paid off. They discovered a formula to control the amount of foam in a beer- which in turn may have some great engineering applications.
From Reuters here:
A mathematical formula can now predict how the frothy head on a beer changes over time, a finding that may have a wide range of commercial uses beyond pulling the perfect pint, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
The formula explains how the tiny bubbles that make up foam grow — an explanation that could lead to the development of products such as metal shrink wrap.
The possibilities include “the heat treatment of metals or even controlling (the) head on a pint of beer,” Robert MacPherson of Princeton University in New Jersey and David Srolovitz of Yeshiva University in New York report in the journal Nature.
Foam is made up of many tiny bubbles that scientists think of as cells with boundaries. The new formula calculates how these microstructures grow.