From IAN ANDERSON
Earlier this year, while standing watching the morning coffee filter
into the pot, a colleague at work remarked on something which none of us
had ever noticed before and yet was clearly observable. As the coffee dripped
onto the surface of the collecting coffee, the splashes were forming liquid
bubbles. They varied in size from pinhead to petits-pois, the larger ones
clearly containing coffee, not air, and existed for up to several seconds,
even the ‘biggies’. They skittered about on the surface, as did mercury
on the bench in my carefree school-days, the smaller ones shooting outwards
from the splash and bounding off the side of the pot.
There was general puzzlement amongst us non-scientists as to why these
bubbles formed at all. Could any of your readers explain them in terms a
layman might be able to understand?
Ian Anderson Cambridge
