Q. Is there anything new to say about a bottle of beer? A. How about this: when you pop the cap, carbon dioxide molecules shoot out of the bottleneck at bullet speeds, says Craig F. Bohren in Clouds In A Glass Of Beer. The racing molecules leave behind the more sluggish ones, creating a bottleneck zone where temperatures plunge to minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, triggering condensation and wispy vapour clouds. Also, beer is generally bottled under about 30 psi to 45 psi (pounds per square inch), which is what holds in the fizz and engenders the opening 'pop'. But if someone shook the bottle long and hard beforehand, would it eventually explode? No, you can shake and shake until the cows stagger home but you won't add any gas to the liquid, hence no extra pressure and no beer blast. All that happens is that the agitated gas mixes with the liquid more thoroughly and drags a lot of it out upon uncapping. Q. Ever 'popped' a friend's beer? A. If you've never heard of this little stunt, you hang out with a classy crowd. Here's how it works: some poor sucker sets down his unfinished bottle of beer and along comes a smart-ass who thumps down his own bottle on the rim of the bottle beneath, which now erupts like Vesuvius. What probably happens is that a sound wave is unleashed inside the liquid, creating high and low pressure zones. Inside the low-pressure regions, activated micro bubbles suddenly expand like mad, creating the whooooooosh! Q. The male scrotum In relation to the testes, the male scrotum functions much like: (a) a protective sheath (b) a cooler (c) a carpenter's level (d) a shock absorber? A. (b). Inside the scrotum, the testes hang away from the warm body, even more so in hot weather, keeping them five or six degrees cooler. Developing sperm are appreciative: they're so temperature-sensitive that a hot bath, fever or pair of too-tight underpants will kill them by the millions. Q. It's a startling vision that hovers, rarely seen, in mid-air. It's not a UFO, it's a 'floating finger sausage'. Ever see one? A. Point your index fingers toward each other about 12 centimetres in front of your eyes, with the tips a centimetre apart. Now look between and past your fingers to the wall beyond. Can you see a sausage-shaped chunk of the disembodied finger, with a nail at either end, floating between your fingertips? 'Retinal disparity' creates the illusion, says Hope College psychologist David G. Myers, with your right eye seeing a slightly different view from your left eye, more pronounced for nearby objects. This is used in making 3-D movies and 'Viewmaster' 3-D scenes, where a pair of cameras set a few centimetres apart simulate depth perception. Observe that you can wiggle the sausage or shrink it or enlarge it by shifting the distances to and between your fingertips. But you can't cook it. Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com
