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."

Under the wrong influence...

[creimer (824291)]

Sorry, I'll take my beer without the scientific mumbo jumbo. If I wanted to get technical, I would drink wines and learn how to sniff corks.

More Research on the Subject

[MyLongNickName (822545)]

More research [theonion.com] on the subject. Very interesting stuff.

I'm in the wrong business

[HangingChad (677530)]

Read more for additional references and a photo showing how the researchers monitor beer bubbles.

People are getting paid to study beer? Where do I sign up?

Possible uses

[fishthegeek (943099)]

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!

Yahoo reference

[edwardpickman (965122)]

Yeah but have they split the Beer atom?

Re:Yahoo reference

[xs650 (741277)]

Yes, the resulting element is vitamin P

Re:Yahoo reference

[JoeCommodore (567479)]

Yeah I hope whoever does it has an electric guitar that can do 4/4 time so they can relieve the energy of the beer atom splitting. Why, yes, Ive seen that documentary on young Einstein. [imdb.com]

What about tea?

[feepness (543479)]

And can it be used to power a starship drive [wikipedia.org]?

Re:What about tea?

[1u3hr (530656)]

And can it be used to power a starship drive?

Of course the Infinite Improbability Drive is powered by tea.

But Poul Anderson had a real beer-powered spaceship. [fantasticfiction.co.uk]

Coming up next...

[kypper (446750)]

The geometric shapes formed by coke rocks [wikipedia.org] and how they are giving architects new ideas!

guinness beer guys.

[CrAlt (3208)]

I can hear them now..

guinness beer guys: "Mixing math with beer? Brilliant!!"

One thing that's always interested me...

[Fyz (581804)]

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?

Re:One thing that's always interested me...

[xs650 (741277)]

I would like to help you out, but a poured beer has never sat for 30 minutes.

Cheers

Re:One thing that's always interested me...

[gardyloo (512791)]

I would guess you are seeing a combination of the "Cheerio Effect" (see Wikipedia) and the mild feedback as popping and coalescing bubbles set up standing waves (approximately at the maxima of the J0 Bessel functions which would describe such waves confined at the liquid interface).

Re:One thing that's always interested me...

[glomph (2644)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9nard_cells [wikipedia.org] I believe it's related to this phenomenon, the bubbles act as markers. I've seen these while flying over small ponds in New England in the early A.M., composed of the fog over the (relatively) warm water.

Getting the cash

[eebra82 (907996)]

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?

Re:Frosty Piss

[sokoban (142301)]

I'm afraid that Frosty Piss will only be considered on topic if you're talking about Budweiser served in a chilled mug.

Re:Devil's Advocate here.

[weak* (1137369)]

Isn't there something more worth while that scientists could be researching?

No.

Re:Devil's Advocate here.

[BlueParrot (965239)]

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...

Re:Devil's Advocate here.

[chuckymonkey (1059244)]

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?

Re:Devil's Advocate here.

[intx13 (808988)]

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.

Re:Devil's Advocate here.

[Londovir (705740)]

Your argument sounds as though you are adopting the "monkeys at typewriters" view. Although I'll grant that some great achievements have been made by combining smaller conclusions together (technically that's almost the definition of science), there have been a number of things that were discovered as the result of dedicated, untiring study and research. Consider the Manhatten Project, the polio vaccine, and the Apollo NASA project. Each relied, in part, on other seemingly random research, but the true nature of the breakthroughs came from the mandate that brought the projects together. (In fact, it's a debatable point that the Apollo project represents the largest, and most expensive, scientific project conceived for a single purpose in recorded history)

The bottom line is there is a clear causal relationship between directed scientific study and scientific results. That's not to say that an AIDS cure, for example, will be guaranteed to be discovered should scientists be thrown at the problem. However, I think it's incorrect to think that breakthroughs can't be found sooner if more research were directed towards their discovery.

Do I think an AIDS cure could be found if we required every person with a scientific background to research it? Absolutely - if one exists, and I believe one does. Science has proven time and again that, when motivated by necessity, it is quite capable. Penicillin, although previously researched, was difficult to mass produce until the mid-40s. It was due, in large part, to the dedicated work of Florey & Chain, that made the necessary breakthroughs leading to expanded use - and that was partly due to the urgent need for the drug during WW2.

The point is there should be some scrutiny involved in academic research. I have a hard time stomaching stories which expand upon seemingly ludicrous scientific research. If it is the result of random ennui being "itched" by a scientist in his free time, that's fantastic. If it's the result of a directed, 6+ figure research grant, I'm more concerned. There are some issues in society that must be solved by applied science, and should be done in an expedient fashion. If that means we need to take scientists and make them research some topics, perhaps we should. If the world is facing a pandemic such as AIDS, SARS, or Avian Influenza, frankly I want there to be an all-out science "assualt" on the problem. Same goes for a potential NEO collision. And if the money for the research programs comes from taxpayers (as it does for some studies), then "laypeople" have every right to scrutinize the process.

All too often us "laypeople" are fed stories where a scientist heads up a multimillion research project that studies frivolous things, and the justification is that it could lead to diverse breakthroughs, usually related to a recent event. For example, this article points out how the research could help improve techniques in studying the structural integrity of bridges. I actually had to verify the article date because this seemed like a pandering to the recent bridge collapse, although in reality it's just a grim coincidence. Although it would be hard to quantify, I'm willing to guess that the number of scientific discoveries found by accident would be less than the number of discoveries that came about as the result of directed research. Using the penicillin reference, the original antibacterial nature of penicillin may have been an accidental discovery - but the refinement, production, delivery, and derivation of alternative penicillin treatments are all results of directed study.

For what it's worth, I notice in the article that this "beer study" wasn't the focus of the scientist's work, so I'm not as concerned. (It seems from his own admission that it's more of a related diversion.)

Re:Devil's Advocate here.

[drsquare (530038)]

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.

Re:Devil's Advocate here.

[digitig (1056110)]

Isn't there something more worth while that scientists could be researching?

More worthwhile than a technique that can be used for monitoring the structural health of bridges? Hey, there must be; it's not as if structural health of bridges is a significant issue anywhere at the moment, is it?

Re:Roland Zonkpaille

[sanyasi (900484)]

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. [masternewmedia.org] 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.