The Science Behind Foam You may Eat [Food]

Edible foam. At this point, we’re weeks faraway from Guy Fieri introducing a Jack Daniels-infused foam atop deep-fried pork belly at TGI Friday’s across the nation. Cliche foodie trope, but the science behind foam continues to be remarkably fresh.

While foam, whether its the frothed milk in a cappuccino or a bubbly ” potatoes” on a slab of meat appears like an uncoordinated mass, structurally, foams follow a collection of three rules discovered way back in 1873 by physicist Joseph Plateau: Three film surfaces intersect at the perimeters where bubbles connect; pairs of intersecting films form angles of 120 degrees; and ” wherever edges meet at a degree, the perimeters always number exactly four, and the attitude is usually the inverse cosine of –1/3 (about 109.5 degrees).”

It’s the bubbles that violate Plateau’s rules that explode firstest.

Physicists and scientists are still looking to unlock the mysteries of foam, like what type of bubble architecture will refill a space using least amount of surface area possible. Just take into account that there really is something more to foam, even though we’re someday fated to determine ” parmesan cheese foam” atop a Domino’s pizza. Take a look at more here: [ Scientific American via The Awl , Image: CC licensed from evilhayama /Flickr]

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This post is tagged: domino s pizza, inverse cosine, jack daniels, joseph plateau, scientific american