• New Year's ball sets energy example

    Mary Altaffer / AP

    Workers hold the cables for the New Year's Eve ball today during a test on top of One Times Square in New York.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    As you head out to ring in the New Year, take a cue from that iconic ball in Times Square. It sips its juice rather than guzzling it, and glows brighter than ever.

    The ball, which drops 77 feet down a pole as New Yorkers count down the final minute to 2011, is lit by 32,256 Philips LEDs (light-emitting diodes), with each 48-diode module using just 22 watts of electricity. As a result, the lights consume about the same amount of energy per hour as it takes to operate two traditional home ovens.

    But that energy frugality doesn't mean New York is skimping on the bling: Each light can be digitally controlled to create a palette of more than 16 million colors and billions of possible lighting effects.

    The ball is a geodesic sphere, 12 feet in diameter and weighing 11,875 pounds. It's covered with 2,688 Waterford crystal triangles that are cut in different patterns. This year, 288 of the triangles are emblazoned with a new heart-themed glass pattern called "Let There Be Love." (The other 2,400 triangles feature patterns from past years.)

    Times Square's first New Year's ball drop took place in 1907, with 100 light bulbs mounted on an iron-and-wood frame. Philips has been lighting the ball for 11 years, beginning with an array of specially designed halogen bulbs for the 1999-2000 celebration. The company replaced the halogen with LED technology for 2008, and used even more efficient LEDs starting with the New Year's celebration for 2009.

    "Today's ball is lit all year round and uses just 12 percent of the energy that would have been required to light it with the original technology," Philips said in a press release.

    The numerals that light up to display "2011" are also all-LED, and consume about as much power as a 40-gallon home water heater, Philips said. Over the past month, visitors to New York have been stopping by Duracell's Smart Power Lab to pedal a stationary bike and generate electricity for the "2011" numerals. The "Final Pedal" celebrity event took place just today. On New Year's Eve, all that stored-up pedal power will help ring in the new year.

    How would you make things even more energy-efficient for 2012? Do you have some "green" resolutions for the new year? Feel free to discuss the alternative energy outlook for the next 12 months in your comments below.

    Update for 5:45 p.m. ET by Alan Boyle: It almost takes an electrician to figure out the wattage of the Times Square ball — and compare it to household electrical use. When Philips says it takes 22 watts to produce the light level that previously required 180 watts, it's talking about the 48-LED modules used in the ball. That's 12 LEDs each for red, blue, green and white. The ball has 672 of those 22-watt modules, which means the entire ball would require 14,784 watts of electricity. The comparison to traditional home ovens would be valid if you were running two 7.5-kilowatt cooking appliances continuously at full blast — which would make the kitchen blazing-hot.

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

  • How to pour that drink, scientifically

    False-color infrared video shows carbon dioxide emanating from a champagne glass while the bubbly is being poured from a bottle stored at 64 degrees Fahrenheit.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    What's the best way to pour a glass of New Year's Eve champagne? Scientists have the answer.

    If you want to make the most of your glass of bubbly, you should pour the wine down the side of the glass, French researchers reported in a paper published by the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry this summer.

    Gerard Liger-Belair and his colleagues at the University of Reims used infrared thermography to track how much carbon dioxide was released from champagne under a variety of pouring conditions. They reported that the traditional technique, which involves pouring the wine straight down into the bottom of a champagne flute, may make a splash — but also releases a lot of the CO2 before the glass can be brought to your lips.

    Studies have shown that the release of dissolved CO2 in the mouth is what's behind the pleasurable taste and feel of champagne. Thus, pouring a stream of wine down the side of the glass preserves more of the bubbles, so that they can tickle the palate as you drink. It's not just that fewer bubbles pop: A less turbulent slide into the glass cuts down on the invisible diffusion of dissolved CO2 into the air, which accounts for most of the loss of effervescence. (This is also why narrow flutes are preferred over the wide-bowl glasses of the old days: less surface area for CO2 loss.)

    The CO2 loss can be twice as much for a down-to-the-bottom pour as it is for a down-the-side pour, depending on the circumstances, the French researchers found.

    Temperature also plays a big role in preserving the bubbly. Storing the champagne at a temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit (3.8 degrees Celsius) seems to be the best way to go. If you pop open a bottle at 64 degrees F (18 degrees C) ... well, at that temperature, you might as well slosh the stuff into a paper cup.

    In a 2006 study published in the same journal, Liger-Belair's team listed some other tricks to control how your sparkling wine sparkles after you've poured it into the glass. They found that more bubbles are sparked if there are minute fibers or scratches in the glass. Thus, older, scratched-up glasses release bubbles more quickly than newer, slicker glasses.

    If you want bubblier champagne in the glass, you can try wiping the flutes vigorously with a towel to leave some fibers behind. If you want to tone down the bubbles (and let them pop on your palate instead), wash the flutes and let them air-dry on a rack, sans toweling.

    But Liger-Belair says the bottom line for maximizing your bubbly is to angle your glass and pour your champagne in a "beer-like" fashion — down the side.

    And speaking of beer ... experts do agree that you should start pouring your winter brew down the side, to minimize turbulence and maximize the liquid volume. But at the end, you should pour enough of the beer into the center of the glass to create an appropriate head of foam. This video from How Stuff Works shows you how the two-part pour is done with Guinness stout.

    By the way, cans of "draft" Guinness nowadays contain capsules of pressurized nitrogen that maximize the beer's frothiness. The folks at My Science Project (already renowned for their research into the mysteries of Jell-O shots) have conducted some experiments aimed at analyzing the effects of various foam-producing technologies.

    And we all know why the bubbles in a properly poured Guinness sink down the inner wall of the glass, don't we? You may have to do that experiment yourself on New Year's Eve. Ah, the sacrifices we must make in the name of science!

    More on New Year's Eve science:

    Connect with Cosmic Log by "liking" our Facebook page or hooking up on Twitter, and check out "The Case for Pluto," science editor Alan Boyle's book about Pluto and the planet quest.