Mathematicians Show Why Bubbles Sink in Nitrogen-Infused Stouts 55
SicariusMan writes "The age old question: do Guinness and other stouts' bubbles really sink, or is it an optical illusion? Well, some mathematicians have figured it out."
Full paper via arXiv; From the article: "To analyze the effect of different glass shapes, the mathematicians modeled Guinness beer containing randomly distributed bubbles in both a pint glass and an anti-pint glass (i.e., an upside-down pint). An elongated swirling vortex forms in both glasses, but in the anti-pint glass the vortex rotates in the opposite direction, causing an upward flow of fluid and bubbles near the wall of the glass."
late to the party (Score:5, Informative)
The Australians figured it out 12 years ago
http://science.slashdot.org/story/00/01/11/2156213/why-bubbles-in-guinness-fall
American fluid dynamicists did it first! (Score:5, Informative)
Twelve years ago an almost identical paper was on the office wall of a chemical engineering professor I had in college. I'm mostly kidding with my subject line - I expect there's novelty in the new paper and just want to point out that this has been used as a model system (probably many times) before now.
Re:Is it replicatable? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is it replicatable? (Score:4, Informative)
Boddington's pub ale uses nitrogen, and it exhibits the same behaviour as Guinness.. it's interesting to see the effect in a clear fluid