Physics Buzz

A little over a year ago, a video of two giggling, drinking Germans started making its way around the internet. As they take sips of their beers, the giggles rise sharply in pitch, thanks to the helium that's taken the place of the CO 2  which ordinarily gives beer its carbonated bounce. Each burst of laughter sounds more ridiculous than the last, and the two lose themselves in a chain-reaction of such high-pitched hilarity that it's impossible not to be drawn in and find yourself laughing along. You can check out the video below.

Robot taste testers are becoming part of the food industry. Originally published : May 19 2015 - 2:15pm, Inside Science News Service By : Lisa Marie Potter, Contributor ( Inside Science ) -- Machines mimicking a human's sense of taste are going on a beer-tasting binge. Despite being called electronic tongues, these devices aren't party robots, pouring beer onto wagging, mechanical tongues. Image credit: www.traveljunction.com via flickr | http://bit.ly/1FxSdkr Rights information: http://bit.ly/1dWcOPS "It's just a bunch of wires and buttons and computers," said María Luz Rodríguez-Méndez , a professor of inorganic chemistry at University of Valladolid in Spain. "It's an ugly thing full of cables." However it looks, Méndez and colleagues developed an electronic tongue that accurately distinguished between four styles of lager beer 100 percent of the time. A variety of screen-printed sensors "taste" electrochemical compounds in

Anyone who has ever carried a tray full of pint glasses without getting their feet wet knows that  such a feat is hard work , but perhaps our sympathies should go out to the baristas in coffee shops instead. New research has concluded that carrying coffee without spilling is harder than beer since the foam on the surface of beer dampens sloshing. Credit: Julius Schorzman via Wikimedia Commons A team of physicists at Princeton and NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering set up an experiment which jolts three identical pint glasses carrying Guinness, Heineken, and black coffee, and measures the resulting oscillations. This video is the team's  entry  to the annual APS  Gallery of Fluid Motion  competition and explains their whole analysis.

Let's talk about beer. This year, the number of breweries in America has hit a 125-year high, ousting 1887's former claim to the title. The US has over 2000 craft breweries and I don't think that includes the  White House . Let's just call it the  United States of Good Beer . U.S. Breweries since 1887. Image Source: Brewers Association But let's be serious. Brewing is a science and NPR agrees .