Daily Archives: 8/1/2011

Clouds in a Glass of Beer Guinness

I subscribe to the Sixty Symbols YouTube channel which is produced by the University of Nottingham, and today, I noticed they had a new video on a subject near and dear to many a physicists heart: Guinness.



If you think that beer is beneath the interest of physics, you should surf on over to Amazon.com and check out Craig Bohren’s Clouds in a Glass of Beer. It is an excellent accessible book on atmospheric physics that examines (among other topics) the way that bubbles form in beer. It’s a creative, informative book that presumes no great knowledge of physics, but can help remove some of the many misconceptions we have surrounding atmospheric physics and weather.

Amazon.com: Clouds in a Glass of Beer: Simple Experiments in Atmospheric Physics

If that doesn’t satisfy your need for equations, you can try this rather beefier exposition, entitled Waves in Guinness.

Raspberry Pi $25 PC goes into alpha production

I’m interested in low cost computing. Like the kind of computing that costs what a Blu Ray disk costs. For a while, that’s been something like the Arduino, which has a 16Mhz 8 bit processor. But the Raspberry Pi is something else: a proposed computer which plugs into an HDMI port for display, uses USB for peripherals, and runs Linux. Best of all, the target price is $25. I hadn’t heard much about this project lately, but apparently some of the first alpha prototypes are being produced. I’m sure to get some of these when they finally go into production: I’ve got a couple of projects that could make good use of such an inexpensive computing platform. I’m keeping my eyes open on this one.

Raspberry Pi $25 PC goes into alpha production – Computer Chips & Hardware Technology | Geek.com.