I could start a whole new blog on this joyful three-word cry if I were so motivated. Or failing sufficient reason and resources, I could at least start a post category on the Hopper for this jubilant philosophy of life, and soon it would surpass even the catch-all “Miscellania” in number. But alas, I do not drink any longer, much to the occasional mild regret. So many hours and days devoted to chugging swill while so many wonderful, aromatic, superbly-tasting brews – ales, stouts, lagers and ices – never quaffed and I never quenched.
Why the rhapsodic waxing on this rarely blogged-about subject?
In all my many travels, travails and wanderings through the beerscape, I do not know if I ever drank a Carlsberg. I’m sure I must have; I can picture the bottle and the logo, but as far as taste or texture nothing memorable steps forth. Which is a shame, because I stumbled across something interest-piquing yesterday that sat plum in the middle of the intersection of beer and physics.
(At least three, maybe three-and-a-half solid years of my life were spent at that particular crossroads. Indeed, I don’t think I ever really understood relativistic length contraction or wave / particle duality or higher dimensionality without a beer in hand.)
Niels Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on the quantum model of the hydrogen atom in 1922. The year previous Einstein was recognized, ostensibly for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, but in reality for his Special and General Relativity theories. Anyway, right around this time or shortly after, Bohr opened his Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, which would later be called the Niels Bohr Institute. And a significant part of the Institute was funded by the Carlsberg beer-brewing family.
At his Nobel acceptance speech, Bohr began and ended by uttering those now-famous words, “Beer is good.”
Well, actually he didn’t, but I’m sure that through most of 1920s, every time he cashed his paycheck, that jubilant cry silently reverberated within his phenomenal mind.
Why the rhapsodic waxing on this rarely blogged-about subject?
In all my many travels, travails and wanderings through the beerscape, I do not know if I ever drank a Carlsberg. I’m sure I must have; I can picture the bottle and the logo, but as far as taste or texture nothing memorable steps forth. Which is a shame, because I stumbled across something interest-piquing yesterday that sat plum in the middle of the intersection of beer and physics.
(At least three, maybe three-and-a-half solid years of my life were spent at that particular crossroads. Indeed, I don’t think I ever really understood relativistic length contraction or wave / particle duality or higher dimensionality without a beer in hand.)
Niels Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on the quantum model of the hydrogen atom in 1922. The year previous Einstein was recognized, ostensibly for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, but in reality for his Special and General Relativity theories. Anyway, right around this time or shortly after, Bohr opened his Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, which would later be called the Niels Bohr Institute. And a significant part of the Institute was funded by the Carlsberg beer-brewing family.
At his Nobel acceptance speech, Bohr began and ended by uttering those now-famous words, “Beer is good.”
Well, actually he didn’t, but I’m sure that through most of 1920s, every time he cashed his paycheck, that jubilant cry silently reverberated within his phenomenal mind.
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