h a l f b a k e r yOn the one hand, true. On the other hand, bollocks.
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To make you feel like you're getting more. Instead of a
pound
of sugar, you're getting like, 50,000 of these things that
look like fine diamonds. Use this marketing angle to give
a
better view of the product too. Show just one big sugar
grain on the bag zoomed in with a microscope, but lit
to
look absolutely delicious.
On the back have pictures of
other competing grains appropriately lit to resemble a
crime scene. Eww, looks like a dog turd. You wanna put
that in your baby's whisky milk?
Works great for Coffee, "Contains 20,000 premium
coffee
bean granules". Flour "100,000 imported fine flour...
uh...bits."
Yup. That would be something you could do.
my slant on something like this!
Name-A-Grain
[xandram, Apr 10 2012]
Sugar diamonds
http://www.beryls.c...fo&products_id=7591
[ldischler, Apr 11 2012]
More sugar gemstones
http://www.globalsu...s%20&%20Decorations
[ldischler, Apr 11 2012]
measuring cup
http://imgur.com/a/uysuC
I'll just leave this here. [Voice, Aug 15 2013]
[link]
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You do know that manufacturers would just shrink granule size rather than increase per/unit price and pass the extra production costs on to the customer, right? |
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"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want
2,000 of something." — Mitch Hedberg |
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Good way to reduce cost cutting in the flour grinding process. I predict a race for ever finer grains: "The absolute finest flour you will ever find: $5 for 6x10^23 particles. Anything finer isn't flour!" |
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There you go, twice for the price. |
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So you'd sell flour by the mole? |
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You can't have a mole of flour. Didn't we (humanity) work through this, with the whole 'atom of cheese' thing? |
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(Unless you meant an Avogadro's number of flour particles, but that's (a) a slight misuse of the word 'mole', and (b) a lot of flour. Flour delivered by burrowing mammals is another story.) |
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Sure you can. The 'pedia defines a mole as: |
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//an amount of a substance that contains as many
elementary entities (e.g., atoms, molecules, ions,
electrons) as there are atoms in 12 grams of pure
carbon-12// |
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So according to this definition, you can have a
mole of anything that can't be further subdivided.
Atoms, molecules, Volkswagens, you name it.
There must be some elemental entity of flour,
past which point further subdivisions result in
something no longer considered flour. Hence the
slogan: //Anything finer isn't flour!// |
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Let's put some excitement back in dry goods. Flour's
lost some of it's sexiness in the past few decades. |
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Interestingly (or not), the concentration of humans ,
taken over the volume of the Earth, is 10^-38M. |
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If the 'pedia told you to jump off a cliff... //There must be some elemental entity of flour, past which point further subdivisions result in something no longer considered flour.// That's a nonsense argument, and about 2000 years out of date. There are no elemental entities of flour. Sure, there are particle sizes so small that no-one would call them flour, but there is no non-arbitrary dividing line, such as there is with atoms and molecules. |
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Nonetheless, thanks for another interesting thing to argue about. All is grist for the mill. |
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//There are no elemental entities of flour. Sure,
there are particle sizes so small that no-one would
call them flour// |
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Take a single particle of flour. Can you subdivide
it, and if so is at least one of those parts capable
of
being described as flour? If yes, do so and repeat.
If not, you have an elementary (which is the word
I should have used above, rather than
"elemental") entity of flour,
incapable of further subdivision. |
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Another example: Let's posit the existence a
substance called "spidermother's milk", or "smilk"
for
short. Smilk is defined to be a solution with a
ratio of precisely 10 H2O molecules to 1 NaCl
molecule.
While it may be physically possible to split NaCl,
such that you could have 5 H2O molecules and 1
atom
of pure sodium, this would no longer be smilk
under the definition. So, the elementary entity
of smilk
is a solution of 10 H2O molecules and 1 NaCl
molecule, and you can define a mole of smilk in
terms of
this entity. |
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Flour must be the same way. There is some point
where you can no longer remove any given
component in any quantity from the mixture and
still have flour. That is the elementary entity of
flour; anything less than that simply isn't flour. |
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//If the 'pedia told you to jump off a cliff// [ytk]'s
is
also the definition of "mole" I learned: a word like
"dozen," or "score." |
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But, to avoid confusion with a mole of atoms, we
should have a different word for 6.02e23 grains of
flour. Mühle, maybe. |
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//If yes, do so and repeat. If not, you have an
elementary entity// This is just the "how many
grains of sand make a heap" conundrum in reverse. |
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By the way, the Wikipedia agrees with the OED --
suspiciously well in fact: looks like cut/paste with
a little light editing. |
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Well, you could spell it out, as I did above - 'an Avogadro's number of flour particles' (or even 'a mole of flour particles') is less offensive (to me) than 'a mole of flour'. To use the word 'mole' you must be referring to discrete things, such as molecules. Not to make a meal of the issue, but I don't thing there's any meaningful way of defining an elementary unit of flour. The smilk example is fine, but it doesn't carry over to a substance with an indefinite composition, and complex metastructure (i.e. a structure that cannot be precisely described at the molecular level alone). |
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//I don't thing there's any meaningful way of
defining an elementary unit of flour// |
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Then maybe it's the Potter Stewart test: "I can't
define it, but I know it when I bake with it." |
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The particle size of fine ground flour is about 0.1 mm.* The volume of one particle is thus 10^-12 m^3. So a mole of such particles would occupy a volume 10^-12 m^3 x 6 10^23 = 6 x 10^11 m^3. That is a cube of flour nearly 10^4 m on a side, a scary prospect. |
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* Source: The Effect of Particle Size of Whole-Grain Flour on Plasma Glucose, Insulin, Glucagon and Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone in Humans, Kay M. Behall, PhD, Daniel J. Scholfield, BS and Judith Hallfrisch, PhD; J Am Coll Nutr December 1999 vol. 18 no. 6 591-597 |
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So, adding about 400 moles of cornstarch particles to
the Mediterranean should make it possible to walk
from Italy to Sicily to Tunisia, if you were to keep
moving at a brisk pace. |
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I was thinking just now that this place might be in decline
because you'd gone, [UB]. I feel we should now perform some
kind of prodigal son ceremony now. |
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But anyway: i see the word "mole" as akin to a word like "last"
or "dozen": a name for a cardinal number outside the usual
number system. Even if it isn't, thinking of it that way makes it
easier to learn. |
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In some circumstances, reducing the size of a particle would
increase its value. A buckyball is more useful for many purposes
than powdered graphite and smaller grains of sugar or salt
would dissolve more quickly. |
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//reducing the size of a particle would increase its value// |
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Shades of The Third Policeman.... |
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Bring on the powder market. |
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"SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS, DEFLECTORS TO MAXIMUM ! " |
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Resistance is futile, [8th]. |
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So, [Ubie], uh, hello. Welcome back, even already. |
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You're quite mad, aren't you ...? |
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"That is not dead which can eternal lie ..." |
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Now all we need is [Dub] to welcome the return of our tentacled, slimy other-worldly adversary ... |
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//You're quite mad, aren't you ...? // |
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Mad? I'm livid! I bet [bigsleep] your best tea service
that [Ubie] wouldn't be back in 2012. Speaking of
which, no point wasting postage - can you just mail
it directly to him? |
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Oh, you get that one too ? |
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Strange weather, Mayan calendars that look like Oreos, and now the return of [UB]. This might be the year that the Lions win the NFC conference. |
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Eh, nah. Some things simply fall too far outside of the standard physics model, even for Vernon to consider. |
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<incoherent enraged spluttering> |
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"I'd like a rice, please - I'm making a risottus." |
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That was a risottus sardonicus. |
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A shipping container would hold about 2.5
femtomoles of rice. |
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//these things that look like fine diamonds.// |
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Sell them by the carat. Carats sound more expensive than granules. In fact, why not sell sugar crystals that look like brilliant-cut stones? |
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Probably because sugar doesn't crystallise into 58-
faceted shapes? |
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The "crystals" would have to be moulded to shape or
cut to shape. Neither seems economically feasible to
do, with a bulk commodity consumed in the
quantities in which we use sugar, internationally. |
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//Neither seems economically feasible to do// |
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I get that it's possible. No problem with that. |
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However, world sugar consumption is approximately
170 million metric tons per annum. That's a bloody
lot of nearsighted Indian child labourers, beavering
away in sweatshops to make sugar into "gemstones"
so it can be eaten by fat Westerners by the
shovelful. |
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