Another case of tea driving scientific effort and discovery: “The aeroacoustics of a steam kettle,” R.H. Henrywood and A. Agarwal, Physics of Fluids, vol. 25, 2013, 107101. (Thanks to investigator Richard Baguley for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Cambridge, UK, report: “The whistle in a steam kettle provides a […]
Tag: tea
A cup of tea and some Smoots: One must or can celebrate standards
A core definition of Britishness, the official six-page specification for how to make a cup of tea, is officially “under review”. But don’t panic. It is standard procedure for the British Standards Institution (BSI) to do a “systematic periodic review” of each of its many specifications which, piecemeal, define nearly everything British. Belying stereotypes of […]
Tea that is of, If Not for, Insects — Its Place in Culture
Some tea news, for thee: “Insect tea, a wonderful work in the Chinese tea culture,” Lijia Xu, Huimin Pan, Qifang Lei, Wei Xiao, Yong Peng, Peigen Xiao, Food Research International, epub January 17, 2013. The authors, at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and at the Ministry of Education, in Beijing, China, explain: “Insect tea… […]
Towards a radioactive urine substitute
“14C is one of the radionuclides for which the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has developed performance testing programmes (PTPs). During the PTP exercises, clients receive samples of natural urine containing spiked radionuclides, for testing. In these programmes, urine has disadvantages. These include (1) slow collection times from donors, (2) unpleasant smell and (3) potential to […]
Another British tea innovation
Britain gave the world many things. Among those are deadpan delivery, Heath Robinson, and a fascination for detailed methods of brewing tea. Those three gifts are combined in the “revolutionary approach to the gentle art of making tea” announced recently by a firm called Cambridge Consultants. Behold their demonstrative video: (Thanks to investigator Robinj for […]
Tea — A perfectly filling beverage
Tea, when brewed and poured, is a liquid perfectly suited to filling otherwise empty space on a news site. It exactly fills whatever quantity and shape of space needs filling. Here’s an example, from the BBC news web site. The headline, as you can see, says: “Male tea drinkers ‘at greater risk of prostate cancer‘”: […]
Odes to British Tea
Today, two odes to British Tea. First, the British Standards Organization’s official six-page standard for how to brew a cup of tea. It was honored with the 1999 Ig Nobel Prize in Literature. Second, Professor Elemental’s music video “Cup of Brown Joy”:
How Much Water for the World’s Coffee and Tea?
While waiting for your coffee to brew or your tea to steep, you might distract yourself by calculating how much water is used to produce all the coffee and tea consumed in the world in a year. Then, if you are feeling in a comparative and provocative mood, you might get in touch with the […]
A shorts course in cooking, inspired by neutrinos
Len Fisher [pictured here], who was awarded the 1999 Ig Nobel Prize in physics for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit, has advice for a scientist who is confident to his very shorts that the neutrinos-travel-faster-than-light reports will turn out to be in error. Dr. Fisher wrote a letter that’s published in The Guardian (on Nov 25): If […]
Ives inside a cup of tea
Though some people merely drink tea, Daniel Ives at the University of Colorado went further. His photo-essay, invoking Ficks’s Laws of Diffusion, is called “Tea Time: Flow Physics Involved in Brewing Tea“. The essay begins: