Have you ever had a good hot cup of tea in front of you, and not enough time to let it cool down to a survivable drinking temperature? Introducing, from BaCo, the Tea-Cooling Dart for impatient imbibers.

The Tea-Cooling Dart looks like a pub dart with folding fins. You simply pull it from your pocket, and pop it into your tea, point first. (The handy, sanitary carrying case is included, and the fins pop open with the flick of a finger.) The metal point with its dainty flutes picks up heat from the liquid, the internal metal shaft carries the heat up to the fins, and they cast it away it the air. The hard plastic body protects your fingers and your cup, and hides the secret of its design. That hidden secret gives the Tea-Cooling Dart its amazing ability to stop cooling your tea at exactly the temperature you desire. The tea goes from too hot to just right, and stays there for you to enjoy.

The secret? The metal shaft is broken halfway up, by a ball and socket joint. When the metal of the tip end heats up, it expands to push the ball into the socket, and the heat goes on up the shaft to the fins. When the tea and the metal cool, the shaft contracts, and pulls the ball out of the socket, with a discreet but audible click. The heat can no longer travel up the metal, and the tea is no longer cooled by the Tea-Cooling Dart. It awaits your drinking pleasure.

The shaft is sealed into the body by leakproof rings, and fitted with adjusting threads. Simply twist the shaft inward for cooler tea, and outward for hotter tea. After a few test cups, you will always have tea at the temperature you enjoy.

(For Americans, BaCo makes a strip of aluminum with an LCD thermometer glued on. Disposable, of course, and long enough to reach to the bottom of a supersized mug of drive-thru "coffee".)

[Apologies and thanks to Bungston for the inspiration for BaCo.]
-- baconbrain, Aug 01 2006

Brilliant idea! But shouldn't you be BaCo National?
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Aug 02 2006


Very nice. Good luck with BaCo National!
-- dbmag9, Aug 02 2006


brilliant! obviously this could work for a lot more than just tea... You could add a ring to adjust how unfurled the fins were: changing the rate of cooling, and also some sort of visual indicator that the cooler has disengaged. (perhaps including heat sensitive paint...)
-- conskeptical, May 10 2007


BaCo Notional, Shirley?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 10 2007


Here's a simpler method: make the fins or fin-activating levers out of thermister bi-metal so that they unfurl at higher temperatures.
-- RayfordSteele, Jan 11 2011



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