What are you doing right now?

[Ruth]

Singing along to Abba in 'jamas anna cardie, eating stew, drinking beer.  After a nice after-work nap. 

This must be like the start of a weekend for normal people, is it?  I worked so many Friday nights over the last 10 years I honestly don't ever remember doing this.  An evening off work, two more days (and three nights!) off work, it's bloody fantastic!  With the added bonus that if I try to meet up with any mates, most of them won't be out at work.

I think I might like this 'weekend' thing.

[Mrs Pingu]

[mcshroom]

A little experiment. The instant coffee in my pot has stopped dissolving properly, so I'm drying it out in the oven the same way we used to dry reagents in the lab (100^oC for 1 hour).

I'm hoping to get properly dissolving coffee again but it may do nothing, or just burn the coffee granules.

[Ruth]

A little experiment. The instant coffee in my pot has stopped dissolving properly, so I'm drying it out in the oven the same we we used to dry reagents in the lab (100^oC for 1 hour).

I'm hoping to get properly dissolving coffee again but it may do nothing, or just burn the coffee granules.

I challenge you to write up this experiment in the style of a Y7 science pupil.

"First we found a beaker ... "

[mcshroom]

Right, so I need to forget all units, draw some wobbly diagrams in pencil and draw a graph with pointy lines then

[Kim]

Alternatively, do a really neat and accurate writeup that reveals a catastrophic failure of understanding what the experiment was supposed to achieve.

[interzen]

Alternatively, do a really neat and accurate writeup that reveals a catastrophic failure of understanding what the experiment was supposed to achieve.

So that'll be writing it up in the style of a science undergraduate, then.

[Mrs Pingu]

Alternatively, do a really neat and accurate writeup that reveals a catastrophic failure of understanding what the experiment was supposed to achieve.

So that'll be writing it up in the style of a science undergraduate, then.

1. Put soggy coffee in glass petri dish and placed in oven at 110C
2. Went to pub for a pint while it dried.
3. Had a few more and forgot about speriment.
12ty. Fell out of pub at 1630, returned to lab to find fire alarm going off. Ends.

[Basil]

Just about to be picked from the Man Creche by Mrs. B after her aqua fit session.  My departure will reduce the number of customers by 50%.

[mcshroom]

Well the initial results were 'interesting'.

Firstly the coffee on the surface looked pretty similar to when it went in.


I sampled some, and this didn't dissolve any better than it had done before going in the oven, but still tastes like (instant) coffee.

There was another side effect though: -

I hadn't anticipated this, but apparently freeze-dried coffee had a melting point of slightly below 100^oC. The granules at the bottom had melted and reformed into a sort of bitumen-like substance. Once re-solidified the mixture was stuck pretty firmly, and due to the much lower surface/volume ratio it is now soaking in the sink while slowly dissolving in an excess of hot water (it's stuck firmly in the beaker at present).

I've sampled some of the matrial from that beaker with a spoon and the wet sample looks like this: -


Conclusions: -
1. Heating instant coffee does not make it dissolve any better
2. Coffee melts!
3. The resultant solidified material may be a suitable material for pot-hole repairs

Recommendations: -
1. Don't put instant coffee in the oven
2. The author should buy some more coffee

[interzen]

3. Don't buy instant coffee in the first place.

[Ruth]

3. Instant coffee is fine.

Just invite me more often to keep up your stock  turnover.

[David Martin]

A little experiment. The instant coffee in my pot has stopped dissolving properly, so I'm drying it out in the oven the same we we used to dry reagents in the lab (100^oC for 1 hour).

I'm hoping to get properly dissolving coffee again but it may do nothing, or just burn the coffee granules.

I challenge you to write up this experiment in the style of a Y7 science pupil.

"First we found a beaker ... "

That is actually in the late C18th style of the anatomists. 'Taking a rabbit, I laid the jugular bare and stopped the blood with twine around the vessel.'

[mcshroom]

A little experiment. The instant coffee in my pot has stopped dissolving properly, so I'm drying it out in the oven the same we we used to dry reagents in the lab (100^oC for 1 hour).

I'm hoping to get properly dissolving coffee again but it may do nothing, or just burn the coffee granules.

I challenge you to write up this experiment in the style of a Y7 science pupil.

"First we found a beaker ... "

Right: -

Heating up Coffee

What we did was heat up coffee to see if it would dissolve faster. We got a beaker and put some coffee granules in it and then we put it in a cooker at 100 for an hour and then we took it out again and waited for it to get cold.

It looked like coffee but it didn't do it any faster than it did before. It tasted like it did.

We turned the beaker over and the coffee stuck in it. It had melted. It was really hard to get the coffee out of the beaker and it was really sticky and hard so we put water in it in the sink. We got some out with a spoon and it looked really sticky and we had to wash it off.

3. Instant coffee is fine.

Just invite me more often to keep up your stock  turnover.

Always welcome 

[Ruth]

 

Perfect!   

[Andrew Br]

Please make allowances for my having being invited out to the pub this afternoon. It was against my better judgement but I went along anyway and I had several pints (all TT Landlord in the best pub for beer in Chorlton CH) followed by an invitation to drink fine red wine back at the house of the friends who had initially led me astray.
Let's gloss over the vision of me running around their sofa trailing a "cat toy" chased by their cats. The furry little buggers took turns in a "relay" stylee to chase the aforementioned "toy".

Context having been set, let's get the point; mchshroom as you're someone who will, one day, win the Noble prize for ridding the world of bad nuclear stuff, I'm surprised that you didn't think to use the magic of nothing vacuum to recover your coffee.
Seriously mate, it's a powerful tool although you do have to make sure that you choose the correct glassware. The wrong choice can be spectacular, although not in a good way. DAMHIKT.
When you're accepting the Nobel prize having utilised a vacuum process to "do good shit and stuff with nasty shit and stuff"*, I don't want any thanks but a quick reference to this thread on YACF would be nice.
Unless there's serious money in it, in which case I'd like 10%. Or a life-time supply of Cabernet Sauvignon and fine malt.

* I didn't want to get too technical for the people with a life non-chemists amongst us.

[mcshroom]

[Basil]

Having a Lidl/Aldi moment.  Eating black olives (straight from the jar), some sort of smokey cheese I've never heard of and smoked salmon (straight from the packet)
No plates involved.
Nom!

[Jaded]

Lying in bed listening to the wind. 

[Gattopardo]

Lying in bed listening to the wind. 

Dutch oven?

[Gattopardo]

Having a Lidl/Aldi moment.  Eating black olives (straight from the jar), some sort of smokey cheese I've never heard of and smoked salmon (straight from the packet)
No plates involved.
Nom!

Are you making crumbs?

[CrinklyLion]

Considering leaving a mildly passive aggressive note on the windscreen of someone who parks like a fud...

[Chris S]

Ugh. Audax O'Clock.

[Tim Hall]

Inhaling Scone and CAIK at waterperry gardens. Upper thames audax innit.

[interzen]

Trying to suss out what I'm going to do car-wise now that my current lease is nearly up (finishes early January)

It's one of those situations where I need to speak to someone to get an idea of what the options are, but I can't do that until Monday. In the meantime, I is doing my research.