A dream of foam: better concrete, beer froth and ice…

A dream of foam: better concrete, beer froth and ice…

A dream of foam: better concrete, beer froth and ice cream

Oktoberfest in Munich is an exciting cultural event, but it is also a source of inspiration for materials scientists and engineers. Not the beer itself, but rather the beer foam is a source of inspiration.

A good head of foam – generally measuring about 1.5 cm and containing an impressive 1,500,000 bubbles – is supposed to be a sign of quality and freshness. Ideally, this foamy head remains stable, but several processes act to destabilise the bubbles: for example, liquid drainage of the foam, merging bubbles, or popping all can cause rapid destabilization. These are generic problems common to all types of foam, whether in food and drink or technologically advanced materials.

Undesirable change in the texture

One destabilisation process, in which large bubbles become larger and smaller ones shrink and eventually disappear, is particularly difficult to stop. Experts call this process “Ostwald ripening,” named for German chemist and 1909 Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald, who first described this phenomenon over 100 years ago.

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