Why does electricity move along wires? This is one of those questions where the answer is relatively simple—the wires are made of conductive metal—but the meaning behind the answer isn't always well-understood. Conductive metals are conductive because of things going on at the tiny scale of atoms and electrons. If you want to understand superconductivity, and what red wine has to do with any of this, you need to understand this part first.

You know how an atom is set up. There's a nucleus, made up on protons and neutrons. Electrons circle the nucleus like a cloud. In conductive metals, though, those electrons aren't tightly locked to any one nucleus. Instead, a conductive wire is a bit like an electron river, in which nuclei float like buoys. "Generating" electricity really just means "making the river flow", getting those electrons to move along from one nucleus to another. That's how electrcity is able to get from the power plant to your house.

But it's not all smooth sailing. As those electrons travel, they encounter resistance. They bump into one another, slowing down their movement like fender bender slows traffic. There are energy conversions that go along with those little collisions. Where electricity once was, you get some heat. When people talk about "line loss"—the usable energy lost to waste heat as electricity travels over power lines—this is what they're talking about. If we could conduct electricity in a more efficient way, we wouldn't have to generate as much to begin with.

Enter superconductivity. Turns out, there are certain materials that, when to chill them down to just the right temperature, suddenly lose all resistance. Instead of a windy, jumbly river slowly moving across the land, you have a straight, fast shot to the sea. More astoundingly, you can turn some ordinary metals into superconductors by exposing them to booze. From Technology Review:

Last year, a group of Japanese physicists grabbed headlines around the world by announcing that they could induce superconductivity in a sample of iron telluride by soaking it in red wine. They found that other alcoholic drinks also worked--white wine, beer, sake and so on--but red wine was by far the best.

Now Deguchi and co have repeated the experiment with different types of red wine to see which works best. They've used wines made with a single grape variety including gamay, pinot noir, merlot, carbernet sauvignon and sangiovese.

It turns out that the best performer is a wine made from the gamay grape--for the connoisseurs, that's a 2009 Beajoulais from the Paul Beaudet winery in central France.

Learn why a 2009 Beauoulais makes such a big difference by reading the full story at Technology Review.

Learn more about electricity, line losses, and waste heat by reading my book, Before the Lights Go Out.

Via DJ Patil

Image: Some rights reserved by krossbow

Free Claude Lalumière and Richard A. Lupoff in San Francisco —

The next installment in San Francisco's excellent SF in SF reading series will feature Claude Lalumière and Richard A. Lupoff, on Mar 17. Jameson's will be served at the cash bar. Admission is free, as always, though donations are solicited for Variety Children’s Charity of Northern California. — Cory •

Gramturismo sez, "A maker in Scotland has created an elaborate, steampunk style hand cranked corkscrew." It's quite an amazing gadget -- talk about thoroughly solving a problem!

Rob Higgs (Thanks, gramturismo!)

Portland's Shwood -- a manufacturer of wooden eyewear -- offered a (now sold-out) limited run of wooden sunglass frames made from Bushmills whiskey barrels. I toured the Bushmills distillery in the 1990s (top tip: volunteer to do the whiskey tasting at the end!), and was struck by the fact that these amazing barrels' only afterlife was being "turned into rubbish bins by a man from the town." Good to see that these storied casks are finding more imaginative third lives.

Shwood has joined forces with BUSHMILLS Irish Whiskey and Boston, MA boutique, Bodega on a limited run of Shwood's "Canby" frame style, crafted from genuine BUSHMILLS Irish Whiskey barrels. Limited to 100 pieces, the White Oak used for the frames dates back over 100 years. The eyewear is packaged in a custom wooden whiskey crate, with a crowbar to pry it open and get the goods.

Based in Portland, Oregon Shwood creates handcrafted wooden eyewear using fine exotic hardwoods. Shwood's in-house manufacturing process merges precision technology with classic skilled craftsmanship to create a timeless art form. Every step from veneering and precision lens cutting, to shaping and finishing is conducted in our own Portland-based workshop to promise an entirely handcrafted eyewear piece.

Shwood | Wood Sunglasses | Projects (via Core77)

Marty Halpern sez, "Help me find a home for my father's (he passed away in 1998, my mother passed away this past October) hand-designed Wild West whiskey bottle collection. By 'hand-designed' I mean my father designed the bottles himself. The home would hopefully be in Southern California to avoid packing and shipping these 30-odd full-size (and breakable) whiskey bottles."

So, as I said, there are about thirty of the individual, full-size bottles, and I need to find a home for them. If I can find the right home, I would be more than happy to "donate" the entire set. I have already contacted Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park, but their representative informed me that they already have so many items in storage that they are being forced to dispose of them. I have also contacted the Anaheim Historical Society and the Orange County Archives -- all to no avail. I am hoping to find a home for these in Southern California to avoid packing and shipping them outside the area, which would be very expensive (a minimum of eleven boxes at least), with no guarantee that every bottle would survive the journey.

If you can think of a resource, an organization, an individual, etc. in the Southern Cal area who might be interested, please do have them contact me, and/or post a comment below. There are already offers on my parents' house so I may only have a few weeks at most to relocate these decanters. They are all up for adoption, but I'd like to keep all the children together (at least those that are still left2) if at all possible.

Wild West Show Closing Down.... (Thanks, Marty!)

This wartime ad from Life encourages you to get loaded on fine booze at home while cleaning your guns, to leave the roads and railways clear for Our Boys.

Life, October 16, 1944

Absolut has commissioned Jamie Hewlitt (co-creator of Tank Girl and Gorillaz) to do a limited edition vodka bottle celebrating London's public drunkenness. It's a rather nice piece of work, too -- suitably grotesque. All it's missing is the grimy, mutilated pigeons squabbling over puddles of last night's binge-drinking lad and ladette vom.

ABSOLUT London

How to: Cook like Nathan Myhrvold in your own kitchen —

If you ever needed a good reason to buy a whipped cream maker: The New York Times adapted several of Nathan Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine recipes to work with ingredients and equipment you're actually likely to have in your home kitchen. The whipped cream maker is the only tool used here that I don't own. And it might be worth buying one if it means that I can make bloody mary-infused celery sticks. — Maggie •

Writing in the WSJ, Tom Downey describes what he perceives as a new shift in the way that Japanese food, coffee, cocktails and fashion relates to the outside world; according to Downey, the ideal now combines the much-vaunted Japanese attention to detail and precise copying with a kind of remaking that produces a "replica" Brooklyn coffee that's better than the best coffee in Brooklyn, a "replica" vintage pair of jeans that look more vintage than the actual item, and so on. It's Baudrilliard's simulacra, with more denim and espresso.

"It's not so difficult to make something that's 100 percent the same as the original," he says. He holds up a heavy, metal zipper, American-made new old stock. "I've got 500,000 of these. Enough for the next 40 years.

"But the key isn't just getting the details right—it's knowing when to change things," Tsujimoto continues. "My style has to be an improvement: With 1 percent more here, 2 percent less there, we create something that looks better. You have to change the fit because all these classic garments were designed with extra room to carry tools or weapons."

He takes a deerskin-lined flight jacket off the rack and points out the colorful American military design stitched onto the back. He passes me what appears to be a standard-issue '50s-style gray cotton sweatshirt until I actually touch the thing. The heft of the loop-wheeled cotton makes it the thickest, heaviest sweatshirt I've ever felt.

Made Better in Japan (via Kottke)

(Image: downsized crop from a photograph by Tung Walsh)