Posts Tagged science
Mixing beers — synergy of zymurgy?
This Sunday during the NFL playoffs, Guiness beer ran one of their ongoing television commercials featuring two eccentric, but (self-styled) “brilliant,” zymurgists. Try this “z” word for a trivia question — the last one in most dictionaries. It refers to those that study fermentation in brewing.
That brought to mind my experience last week at Granite City Brewery — a midwestern USA restaurant that features handcrafted beers. Seeing my befuddled look at the overwhelming selection of suds, the waiter offered the suggestion that I go for a 50-50 blend of the paler ales (the stouter stuff like Guiness is too much for me).
Given my affinity for experimenting, I liked this idea of mixing beers. It worked out a lot better than the last time I tried something novel: Pouring cream into my mug of carbonated beverage. That mixture succeeded for entertainment value — producing an effect like a lava lamp, but it tasted really bad. I do not recommend it.
Aside from the Guiness guys, who seem far too goofy (sampling too much?) to be as brilliant as they think, the fellow I’d bank on for blending drinks would be John Cornell. He co-authored what must be one of the more unusual scientific articles ever: “In Search of the Optimum Harvey Wallbanger Recipe via Mixture Experiment Techniques”.
I’ve heard of beer cocktails such as the whisky-spiked boilermaker — a variant being the “depth charge”. However, it seems that the practice of mixing one beer with another is mainly for salvaging a botched brew. Thus, whereas blends of white wine, and to some extent reds, are the rage in California, the same phenomena remains to be seen for beers. I see a real opportunity here for some research by zymurgists. My advice is that they study the statistical methods promoted by Cornell and made easy by Stat-Ease software, training and consulting. I volunteer to be on the sensory panel that rates the results.
Exercise reduces fatigue — a counter-intuitive effect
My RSS feed from the Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog alerted me to news from ScienceDaily about overwhelming evidence that regular exercise increases energy levels. Professor Patrick O’Connor, co-director of the University of Georgia laboratory that analyzed 70 randomized trials on 6,807 subjects, said:
When people are fatigued the last thing they want to do is exercise.
However, the positive effect of exercise on energy was very consistent — seen in over 90 percent of the trials studied by the UGA researchers.
I feel sure this is true to some extent. I certainly feel charged up after doing a half-hour cardio-workout on my Endurance E4 elliptical. This machine features nothing very fancy for display. It only provides exercise — pure and simple at low impact.
For less anecdotal support for the hypothesis that exercise reduces fatigue, see this report from the University of Oslo. If you feel otherwise — drained by exercise, consider stocking up on a supply of jelly beans. Possibly these ‘sports beans’ ward off fatigue. I advise some skepticism if the findings prove positive, because according to ScienceDaily the study is funded in part by The Jelly Belly Candy Company. See their tasty-looking product at ZombieRunner.
Mercury — a transitory mote in the eye of the sun
On Wednesday residents of my hemisphere saw (?) the planet Mercury transit the sun. This happens only about every decade. One really couldn’t see Mercury because it is so small relative to the sun, which burns far too brightly for the naked eye to withstand. I watched the transit live from an astronomer’s view (Kitt Peak, Arizona*) via the webcast by San Francisco’s Exploratorium. The funny thing is that a speck in their Meade 16 inch reflector’s optics showed up more prominently than Mercury itself. For a perspective on how small this planet appears from earth (only 1/200th the diameter of the sun) see this photograph from VisualUniverse.org. Nevertheless, when Mercury first hit the edge of the sun, the astronomer directing the webcast said the he and his colleague were doing a little “happy dance”! 🙂 By virtue of owning an 8-inch Meade reflector, I am a very amateurish astronomer myself. Seeing Mercury was a rare treat worth savoring. Here’s something really rare that’s reported at Wikipedia: On July 5, 6757 residents in Eastern Siberia can watch the simultaneous occurrence of a solar eclipse and a transit of Mercury. If you want to see this, I advise you go there now, drink a barrel of vodka, set your atomic-powered alarm clock 4751 years ahead and, finally, bury yourself in the snow. Good luck and mind the mastodons!
*Located by red star on map showing zones of visibility. For great views of the telescopes, background narration and the transit itself, click the RealVideo link to the saved webcast.
Sound from Sand: Rock Music?
At a vastly smaller scale than Stonehenge, stones ground by natural forces to a well-rounded and relatively regular shape can make very distinctive sounds, which you can hear at song of the Atacama Desert dunes in Chile. According to physicist Stephane Doudy of the Centre de la recherche scientifique in Paris, the volume of sand slides can reach a nearly unbearable 110 decibels — on par with a jet engine. For the complete story of how “self-synchronized avalanches turn piles of sand into musical instruments,” check out Dulcet Dunes by Fenella Saunders of American Scientist magazine. What I find fascinating is that it evidently takes a veneer of salt to make sand sing, so if you really want to hear a tune from a dune, head for a desert that spills into the sea.