Tired of spilling your coffee? Try a latte instead

You might also like

Tesla driverless system to use updated radar technology

12/09/2016

Apple to develop its own self-driving technology

10/09/2016

HONG KONG: According to a study recently reported in “Physics of Fluids,” published by AIP Publishing, the extra foam manages to dampen the sloshing effect of the coffee, making it much less likely that you will spill your morning joe all over yourself. Even just a few layers of foam will your groggy journey much safer.
EurekAlert reported on Feb. 24, that the idea for the study first came to Emilie Dressaire, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering, when she was picking up her latte at a coffee shop. Dressaire said that when she reached for a stopper, she was informed that she wouldn’t need one for her latte, which got her thinking about how bubbles could work as a dampener. Later, when Dressaire joined the complex fluids group at Princeton University, she realized that she was not alone in noticing the peculiar effect of bubbles, though her colleagues admitted that it was beer that gave them the idea.
Alban Sauret, currently a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research, said described how he first noticed the dampening effect of bubbles while in a bar. “While I was studying for my Ph.D. in the south of France, we were in a pub, and we noticed that when we were carrying a pint of Guinness, which is a very foamy beer, the sloshing almost didn’t happen at all.”
As neither cafes nor pubs are particularly scientific places for research, the scientists decided they needed to move their experiments to the lab. To accurately test the dampening effect of foam, the researchers built an apparatus that consisted of a narrow rectangular glass container filled with water, glycerol (which increases fluid viscosity) and dishwashing detergent. Using a needle at the bottom of the container, the scientists injected a stream of air into the solution producing layers of 3-millimeter bubbles.