Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Breakfast at Percy William Bridgman's house

After some comic strips about chemistry and biology, it was high time to come back to physics... This comic strip illustrates from a practical (housewife's) point of view the fantastic experiment of Bridgman which (partially) resulted in his Nobel prize in physics in 1946 (and in a lot of amazing high pressure experiments about protein denaturation and folding). Theoretical vs. applied science is also illustrated here, from a typically feminine point of view.
(In 1914 P. W. Bridgman coagulated egg albumen under high pressure - above 500 MPa. The characteristic denaturation/coagulation of the egg is similar to that observed under heat treatment, however, in contrast with heat denaturation the pressure-induced denaturation is partially reversible. This cartoon is dedicated to this phenomenon.) 

No comments:

Post a Comment