Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993 TAG: 9311040025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: joel achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A. You may recall that in elementary school you learned that the major species (or "genera") of clouds are: cumulus, stratus, nimbus, altosaxus, rhombus, doofus, stratodoofus, bungus and cumulobungus. Amazingly, we tend to forget these words as we get older.
But cirrusly, our sources tell us that there are only two types of clouds:
Layer.
Convective.
All the clouds you see are one or the other. Layer clouds are, as you'd guess, the flat, sheetlike clouds that form at a specific altitude, while convective clouds are the puffy, globular ones. You might also divide them this way: There are clouds where the wind is in control (layer clouds) and clouds where the cloud is in control (convective clouds).
For example, your basic, pretty, horsetail-like cirrus cloud takes on that shape because the wind up there is blowing it in a swirling pattern. A cirrus cloud is made of ice crystals, not liquid water. It's so thin the moon can shine right through it, often with colorful rings as the light reflects off the ice. Cirrocumulus, altostratus, altocumulus and stratus are also layer clouds, shaped by various wind and evaporation patterns.
The common white cumulus cloud, by contrast, is a roiling bubble of turbulence, shaped by its own internal dynamics. It forms when warm, moist air rises rapidly and cools, so that the water vapor condenses. A cumulus cloud has fairly well-defined borders, because along the edge of this warm bubble of air the tiny drops of liquid water are evaporating quickly.
The truth is, you probably won't remember that the two types of clouds are layer and convective, mainly because "convective" is one of those words that you can't quite summon during a crucial moment in dinner conversation, and thus are forced to use "conductive" instead. Our advice: Just say that the two types of cloud are ice and liquid. Which also happens to be true, conveniently.
Q. Why do beer companies brag that their products are "cold-filtered" or "beechwood-aged" or "dry-brewed" or "genuine draft" even though no one knows what these terms mean?
A. In the old days, when we were small children, a "draught" beer came out of a tap, and words had specific meanings. Today, there is beer sold in bottles and cans that purports to be "draft" beer. We are thrilled at the de-Britishizing of the word, but you have to admit that the total subversion of the word's meaning is a strong reminder that we live very close to the End of Time.
Obviously, the main reason beer companies use these terms is that customers respond favorably to them, and buy more beer. This is called "marketing." The fact is that all beer is cold-filtered. "Cold-filtered" refers to a type of filtering in which a fine screening removes not only all particulates but even microbes.
"The term `cold-filtered' is a little bit of a glorification of a process that sounds better from a marketing communications standpoint than `ultra-fine microscopic screening' or some other term,"' says Tom Sharbaugh, the vice president for Brand Management at Anheuser-Busch.
This filtering process also allows a canned or bottled beer to claim to be "draft" beer. The filtering is so careful, and the conditions so sterile - "aseptic-filling" is the industry term for a clean operation - that nasty bacteria are eliminated. That means the beer doesn't have to be pasteurized. (Pasteurization involves briefly heating the beer to a high temperature, which kills not only bacteria but also some of the flavor.)
The old-fashioned "draught" beer wasn't pasteurized, either. So that's why this new stuff claims to be "draft," though it creates problems, such as what you call a "Miller Genuine Draft" that comes from a tapped keg. A Miller Genuine Draft draft?
But don't be cynical about marketing. It is through brilliant marketing that the beer industry makes the profits that can be funneled in the form of advertising to the TV networks that broadcast the major professional sporting events that provide the jobs for athletes not yet old enough or fat enough to appear in beer commercials.
The Mailbag:
Heather W., age 6, of Glendale, Ariz., asks, "How did the beach get so much sand?"
Dear Heather: Sand is rock that's been beaten up for years, until all that's left are little pieces. It's minerals in miniature. It comes from mountains, down rivers, into the ocean, then gets thrown up on shore, over and over for millions of years.
The term "sand" refers to the size of this stuff, not the precise composition. If it's between 2 millimeters and 64 microns in diameter, it's sand. If it's smaller than that, it's silt. Sand is coarse to the touch, and silt is gritty. If the particles are really small, that's called clay, which feels smooth.
Most beaches have lots of quartz in the sand. That type of rock won't break up into pieces smaller than about 64 microns. It has a "terminal size." "Quartz is the most stable material," says Stephen "Dr. Beach" Leatherman, a geographer and sand expert at the University of Maryland.
You might also find garnet, feldspar and magnetite in the sand. Pink beaches are made of crushed coral. The black beaches of Hawaii have sand from volcanic rock. Sand Beach in Acadia National Park is made up almost entirely of ground sea urchin spines. We're glad the sea urchins have finally been put to practical use.
by CNB