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You might check out "Clouds in a Glass of Beer: Simple Experiments in
Atmospheric Physics" by Craig Bohren (should be <$20 from Amazon), which is
a delightful read on this sort of thing. Bohren distinguishes heterogeneous
nucleation (where something else nucleates the cloud) from homogeneous
nucleation (where the molcules are cooled enough to "stick" in their
collisions
and nucleate themselves. You get heterogeneous nucleation on the insides
of the beer glass or from salt or sand (uck) particles in beer. You get
homogeneous nucleation in the throat of the bottle when you uncap and
release pressure, dropping the temp to about -36C and making the cloud in
the neck of the bottle. This is my fave cloud making demonstration :^).
Not sure if this is germane, but I love collecting physical fact about beer.
Making water hammers to knock bottle bottoms out and dissecting
Guinness cans for the widget etc is pretty entertaining research :^).
Dan M
(who just got thirsty)