2007-05-02 Fortune Favors Fools

The pills I take against my hay fever must contain Green Krytonite, because I didn't sleep very well and was tired all day.
It's a good thing that nothing interesting happened today, so I can go straight to bed after I wrote about my diving goggles: Yesterday, after I resurfaced, my nose bled a little and I washed my face. In order to do that, I removed my goggles and forgot about them completely. I took off my gear and it wasn't until ten minutes later, when I was already eating, that I realized they weren't in my bag. Luckily, somebody found them in the water and was honest enough to give them back to me (hence the title). Can you imagine that? I lost my brand new goggles, they weren't even one month old! I'm such a lucky idiot... This episode will cost me two bottles of sparkling wine, because that's the unit by which forgetfulness is measured.

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I have a question: why does shaking a beverage can make its content frothier? I understand that opening the can makes it sparkle, because it's charged with carbon dioxide gas which cannot stay dissolved in the fluid when the pressure decreases. That's called Boyle-Mariotte Law and its consequences can kill scuba divers. But what the hell has shaking got to do with it? Would it also work if the can was filled to the top, without the slightest trace of air? (Apart from the mess that opening it would cause, that is.) It's over my head.