The Observation
Despite more than 2.7 billion boxes sold and approximately 3.2 billion pounds of it consumed per year in America alone, cereal is generally just considered a sugary, last minute breakfast by most people. While it certainly fits those parameters, the physics involved in a bowl of Cheerios was not fully understood until 2005, when two physicists discovered something remarkable. Although it had been observed for a great many years beforehand, no one really understood why Cheerios “clump” together or cling to the sides when in a bowl of cereal.
Image by www.inthemicrowave.com
The Findings
There were several prevailing theories as to exactly why Cheerios, or any object with similar buoyancy for that matter, behaved in this manner. The rather innocuous observation elicited a much more complicated answer than many predicted.
Milk is approximately 87% water, meaning that it will tend to behave like water in many ways. Of course, hydrogen bonds are a fundamental feature of water and play a large role in the surface tension of the liquid. At the surface of the water, particles will be acted on more strongly by the liquid underneath than by the air above. The inward attraction results in the surface of the water contracting, forming surface tension. This results in a considerable barrier between the surface of water and the surrounding atmosphere, and in water this barrier is especially apparent, having the highest surface tension of any room temperature liquid other than mercury.
As stated previously, the Cheerios are buoyant on the water, meaning that they weigh less than the water they displace. This is not a novel concept to most people, but as it so often does, the devil is in the details. When you take a closer look at a floating Cheerio, the milk forms an upward curve surrounding the edge of it. The same phenomenon occurs at the edge of the container, owed to the meniscus effect. Despite water’s strong cohesive forces, it is even more attracted to the negative charge in the glass molecules (or other hydrophilic floating particles), forming the meniscus. This “u-shaped” curve formed on the surface of the water transports the cereal to the highest point, whether it be the edge of the bowl or another nearby Cheerio. Since milk rides up the sides of a Cheerio, it forms a relative maximum along its walls in the surface of the water, and they will “clump” together at these relative maximums.
Image by Dreamstime
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References
http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/industries/Food-Kindred-Products/Cereal-Breakfast-Foods.html
http://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.1898523
http://www.idfa.org/docs/default-source/resource-library/industry-facts/248_definitions-of-milk-products.pdf?sfvrsn=2
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