enthalpy

Friday, March 12, 2004


How many fist-fights have erupted over the hotly contested Guinness bubbles moving downward?
A new experiment by chemists from Stanford University and the University of Edinburgh has finally proven what beer lovers have long suspected: When beer is poured into a glass, the bubbles sometimes go down instead of up.

''Bubbles are lighter than beer, so they're supposed to rise upward,'' said Richard N. Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Sciences at Stanford. ''But countless drinkers have claimed that the bubbles actually go down the side of the glass. Could they be right, or would that defy the laws of physics?''

''Indeed, Andy and I first disbelieved this and wondered if the people had had maybe too much Guinness to drink,'' Zare recalled. ''We tried our own experiments, which were fun but inconclusive."
I can't imagine what's so unappealing about science and engineering when these eggheads are researching such a fascinating topic. I personally devoted over a decade to this very problem. If only I could find my data. . .



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