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But then you might not expect the lecture to be about beer. Or the most efficient route through the grocery store on a busy Saturday morning.
Winona State University Professor Toby Dogwiler explained how differences in the rock deep below the ground influence the varieties of beer produced in different countries.
“I prefer cider,” the geoscientist said to open the discussion Wednesday part of the university’s semester-long interdisciplanary series on why science matters in everyday life. “But I like beer a lot.”
Different kinds of bedrock produce different kinds of groundwater, Dogwiler said. And since beer is 90 percent water, the water that comes from the well affects the taste.
Hard water with high alkaline content makes bad beer, he said.
So in Dublin, Ireland, brewers use lots of malt to make the water more acidic. Add enough malt and you get that city’s famously muddy brown Guiness stout.
In Burton-on-Trent in England, the groundwater is is more acidic perfect for a light India pale ale, Dogwiler said.
The lectures were part of a series developed three years ago by a loosely organized group of professors who wanted to create an intellectually stimulating atmosphere outside of the campus that brings students and teachers from different subject areas together, said Jim Armstrong, a professor of English.
“Education is not just about sitting in a class ...” he said. “It’s about big ideas and how those ideas connect to the real world.”
In a second lecture, WSU physics professor Nathan Moore discussed how to get in and out of the grocery store without the hassle of maneuvering between people and carts.
He examined the floor layout of Winona’s HyVee.
He presented a grocery list of all the items he would need for a Thanksgiving dinner. Then he created a graph which plotted the location of each item.
“You’ve got all these different ways of visiting the same place,” Moore said. “That’s like the eggs first or the milk first.”
Moore used the store’s tile floor squares as the coordinates for his graph.
He has created a computer program to calculate how many paths a shopper can take through the store based on a grocery list.
However, the program cannot calculate exactly which path is the fastest because it doesn’t account for aisles.
Moore said it is up to the individual shopper to find which path is the fastest, but a general easy way to get in and out of the grocery store is to “walk to the closest thing.”
What are they talking about?
For the past three years, a group of Winona State University professors has come up with a timely topic for a series of interdisciplinary talks.
This year’s topic, “Does science matter?” was chosen because of a decline in interest in science, said Jim Armstrong, a professor in the English department who helped organize the series.
“Fewer of us are going into science,” he said. “The level of scientific illiteracy among students is rising.”
But it isn’t just scientists giving the talks.
Next week, an English professor will discuss how much science there really is in science fiction and a theater professor will talk about the connections between arts and science in the work of playwright Tom Stoppard.
Upcoming talks in the WSU series
Wednesday
How Much Science Is There in Science Fiction? Rob Brault, English
How Much Science Is There in Tom Stoppard? David Bratt, Theatre and Dance
Nov. 8
Making Interdisciplinary Connections n Science and Art Jennifer Anderson, Geoscience; and Sharon Mansur, Theater and Dance
How Architect Santiago Calatrava Combines the Science of Physics with the Art of Sculpture Juan C. Fernandez-Iglesias, Foreign Language
Nov. 15
Magical Realism vs. The Marvelous Real: Reading Human Potential in Literature Gretchen Michlitsch, English
From Poetic to Political Justice: British Romanticism and the Science of Population William Hacker, English
Nov. 29
Why Race is Incompatible with Science Michael Bowler, Global Studies
Native Americans and Science Cindy Killion, Mass Communication
All talks begin at 7 p.m. in Stark Auditorium, Sanborn and Winona streets, and are free and open to the public.
