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So, you want a cup of coffee? Good, there are many ways
of doing that. Nearly all of them produce a cup of coffee
that is too hot. Or at least they should. Now, we all have
lives to be getting on with and don't need to be sitting
around in cafes having healthy conversations with good
friends
while the coffee cools to a drinkable temperature.
That's basically being French. The other problem with
coffee, is that after it's too hot, it's too cold. Now, we all
have lives to be getting on with and don't need to be
standing around with a scrunched up face after
accidentally drinking cold coffee. Then everyone looks
Finnish.
Let's solve it. So, double wall cup, between the walls, a
wax which melts at... oooh, say 75C or something, maybe
people can choose their own temperature. Anyhow, you
add 88C coffee and immediately the heat energy goes into
melting the wax, rapidly reducing the intra-cup
temperature to a perfectly drinkable 75. Now, here's the
magic, if you insulate the outside of the cup well, the
inside will be kept at 75 until all the wax is solid. Which is
nice. That's what you want, coffee at the right temp, for
ages. Done.
A primer on using wax/oil for thermal buffering.
http://www.research...fccc8fb2a000000.pdf Pretty much breaks down how you would choose the right wax, and how much energy you could expect to store. [WcW, Jun 12 2015]
Hot_20cubes
[FlyingToaster, Jun 13 2015]
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yup, link, it's a great idea. |
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Screw this, I'm going to make one: double walled cup, wax,
syringe, small air gap at the top, seal it with solder or metal
epoxy. |
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First experiment, what is my personal coffee temp
optimum? |
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The office Keurig can't produce a coffee hotter than 70C
into a pre warmed cup, the pathetic pseudo coffee machine
it is. Anyway, 70 is hot pleasant, 68 is great 65 pretty
quaffable, 60 not unpleasant. Below that it's starting to get
nasty. I reckon 68 is a good one to aim for. |
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//made it far easier to extract the calories, less chewing, easier
digestion // |
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Heat de-natures proteins (breaking the hydrogen bonds) so it is in
effect "pre-digestion". The structure of substances such as collagen
and chitin are degraded by pyrolysis, and produces a significant
change in flavour. |
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Another less obvious advantage is that thorough cooking kills
pathogens, parasites and their larvae, and allows storage of the
cooked product for several days. |
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Baked a year or two ago. It's called Temperfect, IIRC.
It was on Kickstarter. |
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Yup, the general concept seems to be in the "temperfect"
by "Joeveo". I've just fired off an email asking about the
insulation. It could be phase change, or just thermal
mass, let's see if they tell us. |
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If it's phase change, I'm buying one. Now I'm glad I bought
Carnauba (melting point: 68C) rather than a 5 gallon
drum of some Shell product. At least I can feasibly use
Carnauba to polish my car* if it doesn't go in a mug. |
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*I can't afford a car :-( |
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//Carnauba// Excellent stuff. Pity Rentishams have
driven the price up. |
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Speaking of which, have you considered using
Rentisham's "Sahara Formulation"? It's not often seen
in the shops, but it's formulated to have a melting
point of about 70°C and might be just the ticket. |
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Ian, probably the ones that cooked the food survived longer when the winter hit. |
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And warm liquids are nice when it's cold out. |
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//Rentisham's "Sahara Formulation"? It's not often seen in
the shops,// |
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Alas, I hear the US government have sequestered all
supplies bound for the American continent. Word on the
grapevine is that it is the sole candidate in a cost saving
project by the department of defense. Apparently, while
they are happy with MIL-L-63460, Rentisham's can fulfill
each role, is a superior replacement for napalm, and is
the only known substance invisible to RADAR, LIDAR,
SONAR and the accounts department. |
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Don't forget that Rentisham's can also be used to
enhance the sheen of CEDAR. |
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That rumour is unfounded. Rentishams has never
exported to the colonies, except for a very brief
exception made when the Apollo program was in
urgent need. At all other times, it has been (and
remains) prohibited to export or take Rentisham's to
the Americas. |
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In fact, a statement to this effect will be found on
some of the products pictured on the Rentisham's
website. |
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Though never an official import, Canada has long enjoyed Rentisham's despite its being eligible for inclusion on both the "prohibited drugs" and "explosives" lists... unfortunately for quick-buck seekers, the dogs at the US border know their stuff. |
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//the dogs at the US border know their stuff// |
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and have VERY shiny coats. |
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and some of them cannot be safely brought within 10
yards of a naked flame. |
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I'm afraid I'm going to have to let Boffo know about
this. He's not going to be happy. |
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Of course, we have heard rumours of "mules"
transporting Rentisham's illegally. This is one of the
reasons why Rentisham's tubs and canisters are
invariably short, squat and uncomfortably wide. |
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email from the Temperfect people: |
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Nailed it, we are using a phase changing wax. It's non-toxic
and food safe. Thanks for your interest! |
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They're not responding to email, and their website hasn't
been updated in 18 months. Looks like an ill-advised DIY
venture is in my future. They got $309k and haven't
delivered a single mug. I'm in the wrong game. |
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I thought Steve Gibson got his and was very happy with it.
I'm almost a year behind on SN, though, so I could easily be
wrong. |
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My mug Shipped! update on performance pending delivery
Monday/Tuesday. |
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That's actually quite exciting - I'd like to see a
graph of beverage temperature over time using this
mug. Did you get two to enable you to test Two Cups
of Coffee? |
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You will be provided with an utterly professional graph. The
experimental conditions will involve comparison of the new
eutectic mug with my standard coffee mug which already
has "Ctrl" written on it. If someone could cover my regular
workload for the first two days of next week I'd appreciate
it. I have bought two of the mugs, but I fail to see how this
will do anything but increase experimental variability. |
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Call it the "Miracle Mug". Eutectic sounds like some
kind of urinary tract infection. |
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Surely, as a biologist, you should reject the outlying value and then take the average of the remaining value? |
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Is that a euphemism for "progressively reject data until the remainder fits the theory" ? |
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//Surely, as a biologist, you should reject the outlying
value and then take the average of the remaining
value?// |
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I see you're a seasoned pro. I will take guidance from the
literature, Outlying values will most certainly be removed
using justifications such as "remove that, so we can end
the axis on a whole number" "The grad student was totally
unaware of what that inhibitor should have done... my
paper from 1994 clearly shows the opposite effect...
so..." "well, there's room temperature and room
temperature..." |
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Once the data is in, I will immediately generate a mean
data set +/- standard error of the mean, wasting time
looking at the distribution of that data will not be
tolerated. SEM is very convenient as the number of
experiments is a fairly subjective... is it all the runs on a
particular day? each sample? Perhaps each individual cell,
or organelle? The key is to tweak it until the error bars
look about right. Then, we can just throw repeated t-
tests at everything. If your minions suggest this might not
be correct, you need to work on lab culture. |
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Sadly, I've only got experience in labs that check stuff... I
might need multiple cups of coffee over many days to get
reliable data. Occasionally I might need a doughnut, or a
slice of cake. |
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// If your minions suggest this might not be correct, you need to work on lab culture. // |
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The Don's looking to recruit people with just that world view. |
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// Sadly, I've only got experience in labs that check stuff... // |
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There's your mistake, right there. Sign up for the Home Office Forensic Service. Then you can just write down any old rubbish, and get away with it for decades. When you're finally found out, just take early retirement. |
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" Once the data is in, I will immediately generate a mean data set " |
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Just another example of data bullying and those who enable it. Shame on you .... |
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What journal are you publishing in? I eagerly await it. |
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