Links for 2011-02-10

"If you've ever sat down at a pub to a plate of really good fish and chips--the kind in which the fish stays tender and juicy but the crust is supercrisp--odds are that the cook used beer as the main liquid when making the batter. Beer makes such a great base for batter because it simultaneously adds three ingredients--carbon dioxide, foaming agents and alcohol--each of which brings to bear different aspects of physics and chemistry to make the crust light and crisp."

A nice discussion of the differences between amateurs and crackpots.

"The thermal Casimir force - whereby two objects feel an attraction caused by thermal fluctuations of the electromagnetic field - has been measured for the first time by physicists in the US. The tiny attractive force was detected between two gold surfaces separated by at least 3 Âµm. This is too far apart to have been due to the more familiar Casimir force that arises from quantum zero-point fluctuations."

"A recent book, Academically Adrift, concludes that students learn frightfully little in college. Its conclusion is based in large part upon small or nonexistent gains on the CLA. The authors of the book point out several important areas of genuine concern, such as lack of study time and writing experience on the part of college students. These worrying areas of concern should not be ignored. But the book's conclusion that higher education is "academically adrift" does not fully follow from its primary data. Although the authors recognize some of the limitations of their data, these limitations may not be fully recognized by readers and certainly have not been appreciated by reviewers. What is missing?"

"Between building airplanes and playfully destroying everyone else in my apartment at Super Smash Brothers, my roommate Nathan brought up an interesting recent fact about LeBron James. He told me that LeBron scored 11 consecutive field goals (not in football... you know who you are) in one game. Apparently this was a pretty special event, but how rare is it for a player of LeBron's caliber? TO THE SCIENCE-MOBILE!"