Usually, it's the students who sing the praises of beer. It is our pleasure, therefore, to welcome this guest columnist, Bob Stern, Professor of Geosciences, University of Texas at Dallas. Professor Stern writes about the incorporation of Corona "Finishing Touch," cut by Einar of Union Editorial, into his University lectures.

I was very surprised the first time I saw the Corona Volcano commercial ("Finishing Touch"). Here, in 30 seconds, the time-lapse artists grew a realistic volcano out of the water, made it go extinct, populated it with palm trees and vines, and drew away in classic Corona ad style to reveal the healthy young man and woman with a single Corona between them. I was startled because here was shown the first educational commercial. I've studied submarine volcanoes for a good part of my career, but never had I seen a better evolutionary sequence, all ending with the signature trompe l'oeil of that modern classic, the Corona commercial. I wondered for the first 25 seconds what was being sold, until the camera started to pull away from the palm trees in the distance, revealing the white sand before the single Corona came into view.

What is going on here? Is there a whole new genre waiting to be developed? Can we marry scientific visualizations with the private sector to produce edu-mercials? What other themes could be turned into a Corona commercial? Maybe start another submarine volcano and grow it to the surface, then let it erode and subside, in classic Darwinian atoll style, with a reef growing up around it, topped by the Corona pull-away? Or maybe the origin of the moon, resulting from a collision between Earth and Mars, ejected material recondensing to form the moon, with eruptions etc. until the camera pulls away for the Corona couple on a lovely beach? The possibilities may not be endless, but there are many!

I show the commercial at the end of a University lecture about submarine volcanic eruptions. At the end of my presentation about NW-Rota-1, the only submarine eruption witnessed by scientists (to learn more about NW-Rota-1, click here), a student asked what is the fate of submarine volcanoes? I showed the Corona commercial and his question was easily and engagingly answered.

Are there other topics that could be exploited? Absolutely. Are there other commercial types that could credibly become edumercials? None come to mind. The present Corona genre, by always pulling away from the horizon to the immediate, human foreground, reminds us - in a uniquely powerful way - of the distance between the physical universe and the pleasures of the flesh. This provides a bridge from the celestial to the purely human, and engages us in ways that no other commercial does.

Does the Corona genre offer a bridge between the transcendental and our everyday lives that could be exploited to teach about the universe? I think so. Just about any scientific visualization can be put in the first 25 seconds, as long as the last 5 seconds - the payoff, pullaway shot - is on a beach, night or day, with a couple and a single Corona between them. A wide range of short but powerful science lessons could be generated from present knowledge and visualization technologies - and maybe sell a few beers as well.

Just a thought...