(It is Friday in horologically advanced regions of the world)
I’ve just seen this paper abstract, posted on another forum.
The speed of sound was measured in solutions of sucrose (0-70 wt/vol%), glycerol (0-30 wt/vol%) and orange juice (0-40 solids wt/vol%) as a function of temperature (10 °C to -13 °C). The velocity ( c ) in the unfrozen solutions, including the supercooled samples, could be modeled as a simple linear function of temperature (T, °C) and composition (x, wt/vol%): c = c[w] plus k[x]x plus k[T]T where c[w] is the speed of sound in water at 0 °C, and k[x] and k[T] are solute-dependant constants. There was a large increase in ultrasonic velocity corresponding to freezing in these samples (e.g., an unfrozen 10% sucrose solution has a speed of sound of 1416 m s[-1] at -5 °C while a similar frozen solution has a velocity of 1983 m s[-1]). The ice content was estimated from phase diagrams of similar samples and was a linear function of the change in ultrasonic velocity upon freezing for samples <8 °C. Some details of the effects of ice microstructure and possible theoretical approaches to its effects on ultrasonic properties are also discussed.
The speed of sound in frozen orange juice? What?
I’m not ashamed to admit I used to look after one of that journal’s competitors (J Sci Food Agri). Honey, you ain’t seen the half of it. My favorite was a paper about creating chapati flour with the optimal biophysical properties for scooping curry. Food science is big business, as is frozen juice, and though I’m not going to delve deeper, there could have been a method in their madness.
In fact, this could be a good example of that phenomenon we were on about in your earlier post about cheap journals not being able to afford proper subediting. We used to get lots of abstracts like that whose main objectives seemed utterly inscrutable but actually became clear if you read the Introduction. But the authors weren’t good at stating the rationales for their projects in the abstracts. One of the changes I instituted in my group of journals was the compound abstract, which forced them to write why they were doing their experiments and why we should care. The authors who struggled the most realized that their research actually had no point – which made it easier for the Ed Board to reject them without review, thus saving the reviewers and my editorial staff lots of precious time.
hapati flour with the optimal biophysical properties for scooping curry
But that is important! Soggy chapatis are a curse!
If the universe is infinite, with infinite possibilities, isn’t it inevitable that there’s a planet somewhere that is made out of frozen orange juice? When we find it we’ll be able to tell its inhabitants what the speed of sound is around their parts.
I’ve either had too much caffeine today or I’ve read too much Douglas Adams.
laugh
I can’t wait to mix it with the planet made out of vodka…
Jennifer’s comment reminds me of the people at the IFR who got an Ig for discovering that cornflakes go soggy if you pour milk on them. The serious side of their work was finding out what exactly it was that made them go soggy (e.g. why water doesn’t work). The IFR got several letters complaining that they were wasting tax-payers’ money with this stuff.
Odd, I never heard about any research into the effects of pouring beer over cornflakes.