Applied Fizzics Field Notes

Everybody knows cold things make your drinks cold. And as it turns out, nothing does it better than ice. But do you know why ice is the best at it? And how much ice a Snickers Bar could melt? And why citrus farmers in Florida spray their trees with water during a frost? Find out in Field Notes #12...you'll never look at ice the same way again.

We asked Archimedes what happens when a chunk of ice melts in a brim-full glass of water: Does the water level overflow, fall, or stay the same? Then we asked what would happen if there was a pebble frozen in the ice cube. Then we asked what would happen if there was a huge bubble frozen into it. We thought we caught it on a perfect three-hour time-lapse, but we had our Bigfoot moment: we only got one grainy image of an amazing floating tower of ice. 

Put an ice cube in a glass of water and it floats. Hardly breaking news. But that familiar observation is one of water’s most consequential peculiarities. It helps fish survive winter. It explains the tip of an iceberg, and played a role in the wreck of the Titanic. And it lets us fill a glass right to the brim, leave a sizable chunk of ice sticking out of it, and ask a question: Will the glass overflow? Somewhere along the way, while waiting for the ice to melt, we talked about the stability of atomic nuclei and the origin of the cosmos. What??

Yes, we know this is not how you're supposed to open Champagne. Yes, we know the cork should come out with the sound of a nun's sigh. But in the interest of science, sometimes you have to break the rules. In this edition, we shake a bottle of Champagne and see if that makes the cork go faster.

We measured the speed of a Champagne cork using nothing but an iPhone, some poster board, and a Magic Marker. The speed will surprise you, but the acceleration will shock you.

A bottle of Champagne at 65 psi contains a surprising amount of stored energy. Break the bottle, and that energy is released very quickly. We know this because, in the course of product development, we blew up a lot of bottles. But here's the interesting question: Which is more dangerous—a full bottle pressurized to 65 psi, or an empty bottle pressurized to the same pressure?

We've spent a lot of time talking about how CO₂ gets into and out of solution. This week, we decided to close the loop. First, we measured the pressure inside a fresh bottle of Champagne. Then we opened it, drove out the CO₂, and asked a wonderfully simple question: Can we put the bubbles back?