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This morning I realized the #1 design flaw of coffee: it cools down too fast. Much of this problem can be solved by a well insulated coffee cup, but this will only go so far as a solution.
So I thought up a way of keeping coffee hot longer: use a liquid with a higher heat capacity. Of course
vegetable oil coffee wouldn't taste quite right, so I propose using heavy water. I assume heavy water tastes the same as regular water, and other than being quite a bit more expensive than regular water I don't see why we don't make coffee out of it.
Added bonus effect: heavy water boils at 101.42° C, so you could start at a higher temperature. (Warning: Contents are hotter than boiling water.)
Additional product that this would create a market for: Heavy Creamer. Same as regular milk/non-fat milk/half-and-half/cream, except the contained water has been replaced with heavy water. This will allow your cream to not float at the top of your dense coffee. Determining ways of producing this without harming cow mitosis is still in the research stage.
Heavy Water
http://www.sno.phy....nsu.ca/sno/D2O.html
[Worldgineer, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Heavy Water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
For [oxen] [Worldgineer, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Is Heavy Water Dangerous
http://www.straight...ag/mheavywater.html
From the font of all knowledge, The Straight Dope. [kropotkin, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Heavy water toxicity
http://yarchive.net/med/heavy_water.html
Estimates it would take around 20kg to kill you. [kropotkin, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
D2O Moisturizer
http://www.skinrxcl.../janeiredaled20.htm
It looks like someone else has found a marketing use for heavy water. [Worldgineer, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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It's mildly toxic, but only if you drink only heavy water. Basically you are depriving your body of regular water. Although heavy water is fine for most bodily uses of water (disolving solids, etc.), there are some functions of the body that need light water (namely, mitosis). I'll find a link for you. |
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Of course the solution to the mitosis problem for those who only drink coffee and consume no other moisture-containing substances all day would be to only sell it in 50% heavy water strength. Um... and not sell it with a straw (due to higher density (but then who drinks coffee with a straw?)). |
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The difference in specific heat capacity is only about 5%. If you want something with a significantly higher specific heat, use liquid helium. Mmmm. |
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Nope, it's a no-cal solution. It's even Atkins approved. |
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[krop] Now that's just silly. We want hot coffee, not shatter-your-teeth cold coffee. Plus, I hate the taste of liquid helium. |
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Wow, only mildly toxic, just like chemotherapy. Sounds
like fun. Sign me up. [+] |
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"The Heroes of Telemark" That's it! I've been trying to
remember the name of that movie for several years.
Thanks for the coincidence. |
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Wow, only mildly toxic, just like botox. I can't stop smiling. [+] |
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//sell it in 50% heavy water strength// Would only half of it boil at 100° C? |
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Starbucks coffee cups become twice as small. |
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[FJ] Yes. The first half will boil off at 100C, then the second half would boil at 101.42C. The fun part is that when they re-combine, if the second part hasn't cooled down to 100C by the time it hits the brewed coffee it will make the coffee boil again right in the pot. |
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Of course once it stops boiling it will return to 100C (mostly killing my start-off-hotter effect), but will still have the high-heat-capacity benefits. |
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Coffee cups might be made of heavy metal. |
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(World) Haven't used a straw but I've been accused of "coffee on a stick" because I make it s t r o n g.
I remember hearing in college (doing the all-nighters) that if I put cream in my coffee it would take longer to cool off because it made the liquid ~heavier~ or thicker. Time difference seemed negligible. When you keep a pot on a warmer or reheat the pot it definitely gets a bitter taste and I thought that was from being heated longer. So I'm wondering if there might have to be way to adjust something accordingly to avoid that.
I recall when perrier et al first came onto the market and I thought "Who in the world would pay for a bottle of water?" HA! and double HA! Everybody is now. So even at 50% heavy water (less toxic), the novelty of a water specifically designed for coffee would appeal to a fairly large market. And see, heavy water kills the fish but goes nicely with a bun. |
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I'm searching for a link... I've heard that heavy water is more than just "mildly toxic". Ingesting it in any quantity could prove most fatal from what I know about it. |
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Most of the links seem to indicate that it is only toxic in large amounts. Tritium-based water is probably more toxic as it is radioactive. |
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BTW, heavy water is hygroscopic which means it readily absorbs water. :) |
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Starbucks renames its regular coffee to "heavy", its deuterium coffee to "weighty", and its tritium coffee to "laden". |
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[oc] All that "Heros of Telemark" stuff. What coincidence? |
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[hb] I don't belive your authority unless s/he's linkable. |
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Its in the wikipedia link, down the page a bit. Interseting
story about how the allies sank a ferry boat with enough
heavy water on board for the Germans to possibly get a
chain reaction going. |
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Just drink the coffee faster and not let cool down. Besides, your boss won't like it your coffee breaks are longer just because the coffee is still hot. :) |
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I like it. Some things just need to be... heavier. |
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Possibly [Rods]. Heavier isotopes have lower vapour pressure ie they are less likely to evaporate. |
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If you boil a mixture of H2O and D2O, the H2O should evaporate off first, leaving a mixture enriched in D2O. Therefore if you kept going (for a long time) you could ultimately get to some heavy water. But bearing in mind that the natural abundance of D is only 0.015% or so, it's going to take a while. |
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Also likely true of pouring water in a cup, waiting a few minutes, and pouring most of it out. Repeat a few million times. |
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Live dangerously and have a cup of tritium tea. |
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There's a marvelous sting-in-the-tail sci fi short in one of the Year's Best collections, where the teller is relating a tale of woe to someone he is making tea for. It emerges the teller's friends were collectively killed in an accident engineered by the listener. It further emerges that the outcome of the accident was a rare superheavy element with enormous explosive properties, that could be kept stable in a teapot. And I guess you can guess the rest. |
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I just drank a few mL of D2O a bout an hour ago. I'm still alive! I did taste a little weird, but it was pure and pure H2O tastes funny, too. |
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Thanks, [Pack]. I'll keep you in mind for all of my ginuea pig needs. |
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I never heard from [Packwidth] again. Should I take that as a bad sign? |
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There is one glaring problem with this idea - heavy water has a _lower_ mass-specific heat (and a very slightly lower volume-specific heat) than ordinary water. |
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How about a mini-pressure vessel as the cup? You'd need a specialized attachment to transfer the coffee from the pressurized brewer. There'd also need to be a relief valve on the cup to allow you to sip the coffee without being sprayed with scalding java. While your at it, have the cup surrounded by a second shell with an insulating vacuum. |
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All heavy and expensive but, from what I've seen of high-end coffee machines, price and unwieldiness doesn't seem to be a barrier. This device should meet most of [Worldgineer]'s criteria. |
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Surely, for keeping coffee warm your best option
would be tritium coffee? The increased mass
would give the coffee even more thermal inertia,
and the radioactive decay could even provide a
small element of heating. Plus, it would provide an
interesting novelty 'glow' effect. |
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If you're worried about radiation, one could
presumably adulterate the concoction with
ordinary deuterated coffee, which would act as a
moderator. |
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//tritium coffee? The increased mass would give the coffee even more thermal inertia// No it wouldn't. (Hint: See my comment above; also, why was helium mentioned in earlier annotations?) |
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Heavy water might inhibit mitosis, but that's not
particularly important... you can live for quite a
substantial period of time without any significant
cell division. The real problem is that your
mitochondria start to run out of protons to pump
about the place while making ATP, that and other
pH balancing pumps would be inactivated. |
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The glaring problem is that heavy water's actually
worse at storing heat, per unit volume or mass
than regular water. You MAY burn more calories on
a Heavy Water supplemented diet... I'd imagine
you'd gain a bit of weight due to the heavier
water, you'd need more energy to move that
about and your mitochondria wouldn't be working
quite as well as they might meaning you'd gain a
little in the Glycoysis:mitochondrial ATP balance.
Glycolysis being less efficient. |
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//you can live for quite a substantial period of time
without any significant cell division// That sounds
odd: can you clarify your reasoning? |
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Won't you have complete agranulocytosis within 2-3
weeks? |
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Chemotherapy, of course, drastically inhibits cell division for some time without being entirely fatal. |
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Yes, yes, obviously, but how drastically? To the
point of //no significant
cell
division// ? Except in marrow transplants, the goal
is
to suppress pathologically rapid mitosis (tumor)
without
suppressing physiologically rapid mitosis (like
marrow) too much. No? |
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Not meaning to press the point, just
trying to find out if [bs0u0155] has something in
mind that I'm overlooking. |
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I was actually thinking of chemotherapy as an
example. I was of the mind that 2-3 weeks was a
significant amount of time. I think with enough H >
D replacement you'd be dead of proton balance
problems long before then. |
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If you find you never have to clip your nails, time to cut down on the heavy coffee. |
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Whoa... I'm back. Perhaps we should avoid baking
this. The last eight years were a bit odd. |
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Welcome back! It's good to have a Halfbakery idea so rigourously tested. |
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I read the first few lines, and already it's hilarious. Bun! |
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Though, I'm surprised at your problem. My problem is often that coffee is served way too hot and refuses to cool down. Half the reason I put in milk/cream is to cool the coffee down. Like the coffee at starbucks: I'm convinced they have some kind of magic that defies the laws of physics and keeps the water liquid at above the boiling point. Damn the stuff is like lava! |
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//My problem is often that coffee is served way
too hot and refuses to cool down. Half the reason
I put in milk/cream is to cool the coffee down// |
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You have a few tactics here: 1. buy smaller
coffees. the surface area/volume ratio will mean
it cools faster. 2. leave the lid off for a bit. A few
moments while it's really hot will mobilize a little
water into vapor. A few moments when it's really
hot will make the biggest difference. 3. put the
milk/cream in as late as possible. The milk/cream
is cool.... so it cools the coffee down, however if
you wait a little before you put it in then the
temperature difference between the fresh hot
coffee and the surrounding atmosphere will cause
the fastest rate of energy loss... then you get an
additional cooling effect by adding milk. Energy
transfer and temperature difference have a non-
linear relationship... 4. take your own travel mug
thing... preferably stainless steel: the thermal
mass of the paper cup they give you is negligible.
So when they pour the coffee in, it looses
relatively little energy to the cup. A meatier steel
mug, even though it's vacuum insulated, will take
the edge of the temperature just because the
coffee has to warm up more material. 5. Move to
Denver: the altitude and low humidity should
promote faster cooling... I'm not sure on the
effects upon actual coffee making, it depends
whether the machines compensate for
atmospheric pressure variations, however, high
altitude coffee roasting is supposed to improve
flavour. |
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Or Starbucks could market coffee ice cubes. |
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or you could order one normal latte, and one iced
latte, mix the two and you'll end up with 2 warm-but-
not-hot lattes.. |
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Howabout going a bit upmarket and replacing the drinking water for the Civet cats with heavy water? |
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