Category: Sustainability/environmental

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Observations Science history Sustainability/environmental Tea

A language problem?

Bob Ward, Obama quote, climate change
The last generation: our urgent need to communicate effectively.

“The beverage was prepared by pushing water (at 94ºC and 1.0 MPa) through a pellet of coffee beans ground to an average of 10 – 100 μm diameter. The pellet had been compacted (“tamped”) using a variable pressure as described in ref [1]. Following a manual transfer of the cup to the table, the drink was consumed at a temperature of 55ºC. Fruity overtones were noted.”

Would you rush to try this coffee?

Last week I wrote about the effects of climate change on coffee and how climate scientists are trying to reach out and communicate more about the science behind global warming. But there was a crucial question left un-answered, just how do we communicate? Do we all speak the same language or is the dry impersonal prose of science a hindrance to discussion?

To start with the encouraging news. It turns out that scientists are a pretty trusted bunch. In a recent survey 79% of the British public trusted scientists to tell the truth (compared with 21% for politicians). Part of the problem for politicians may be the language that they tend to use, “if I am honest…”, “to be fair…” etc, are apparently statements that haemorrhage trust. These are not statements that you will hear made by scientists. The language of science is cold and dry, utterly devoid of the personal. So, coupled with the results of the survey, it is tempting to think that we should continue to use our cold and impersonal language when communicating things like climate change. It seems that this works.

Steam, scattering, colour
How would you describe your coffee? Do those who read your description read it in the sense that you wrote it?

Only we would be wrong, the language that we use is (apparently) not helping us to communicate and we need to change it (as the meeting was told in an impassioned talk by Bob Ward). An average scientific paper for example is designed to convey exactly what we did, how we did it and to eliminate any possible element of confusion. Ideally, we would write a scientific paper so that someone else could read it, understand precisely what we have done and repeat the experiment under very similar conditions. In this context, our dry language can work very well but does it work generally when communicating results more widely?

To see the problem, compare the (scientifically written) coffee review that started this article with an extract from a recent review of Silhouette Cheapside by Brian’s coffee spot:

“The coffee offering’s simple: there’s a single-origin espresso from Notes, a Brazilian Cachoeirinha during my visit. As an espresso this was gorgeous: fruity and complex, it rewarded me with every sip, holding its own right to the end. I also tried it as a flat white, which was very smooth and surprisingly different, the coffee and milk perfectly complimenting each other.”

A visit to Cheapside may be imminent.

So this is the problem, while the scientific language may convey accurately what was consumed, it can’t convey it fully. Language that communicates more generally includes details about how we feel: “gorgeous”, “rewarded me with every sip”, “surprisingly different”. The language used in Brian’s coffee spot in no way detracts from an accurate description of the espresso or the flat white. Arguably your idea of the drinks that Brian sampled at Silhouette is far better formed in your mind than the idea of the espresso described by the scientific-language description at the start of this post. Can we extend this reasoning to scientific descriptions of the science of climate change and its likely effects?

Earth from space, South America, coffee
Our common home.
The Blue Marble, Credit, NASA: Image created by Reto Stockli with the help of Alan Nelson, under the leadership of Fritz Hasler

Perhaps you could imagine yourself in the position of a climate scientist: your research is showing you that the planet that you live on is likely to suffer significant change as a result of something that we humans are doing but can also do something about. I would guess that you are likely to get quite worked up about it. Wouldn’t it come across better if scientists were to use some of that emotion in how they communicate? Wouldn’t it convey our meaning more effectively?

Immediately though we come up against this issue of trust. Does the cold and dry scientific language somehow better communicate that the argument is evidence based? In this line of reasoning, subjective descriptions would be ok for things like describing a good coffee but not ok for describing climate change. And yet I can’t help feel that even here there is a problem. The philosopher of science Michael Polanyi argued that “Fairness in discussion has been defined as an attempt at objectivity, i.e. preference for truth even at the expense in losing force of argument”. Our “preference for truth” must include the fact that we have an emotional investment in the argument. It is our planet that we are destroying. Indeed, attempts to hide this emotional investment may even lead others to suspect climate scientists of other, more nefarious, secondary motives (financial gain, global conspiracy). However there is an important caveat on Polanyi’s argument, he writes: “[f]airness and tolerance can hardly be maintained in a public contest unless its audience appreciates candour and moderation and can resist false oratory…”.

screenshot of tweet from Digitalnun
A thought provoking tweet from @Digitalnun – science communication goes both ways.

Which brings me to a last point. A recent tweet by Digitalnun posed a question on related lines: does careless reading or careless writing lead to more problems? What we write is not necessarily what people read and if we allow emotion to enter into the cold language of science then we may increase the likelihood of misinterpretation (whether deliberate or not). Will those who read our attempts to communicate science with full honesty be able to resist false oratory, twisting our words to imply a ‘war’ or financial interest? Which is more appropriate, to remain dispassionate and potentially unconvincing or to be more honest in our discussion at the possible expense of losing trust? It’s not a question which seems to have an easy answer. What do you think? Do scientists have a language problem? Would you trust a discussion on climate change more or less if you thought that the scientist actually cared about the planet too? Let me know, either in the comments below, on Facebook or on Twitter.

[1] is hyperlinked above but if you are in the habit of scrolling down to look at the references, you can find the article about tamping in “coffee research” published here.

The Polanyi quotes are from “Science, Faith and Society” by Michael Polanyi, University of Chicago Press, 1964 (2nd edition)

 

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Sustainability/environmental Tea

Talking about coffee and climate change

coffee cake Muni
Coffee and chocolate, both of which may be badly affected by climate change.

Last week the Royal Meteorological Society hosted an afternoon of talks and discussion titled “Avoiding Myth, Mayhem and Myopia: the challenge of climate science communication”. The meeting coincided with a social media campaign “#showthelove” which aimed to highlight something that you fear is at risk because of climate change. As coffee is definitely one of those things that is at risk (and indeed is already being affected by climate change), I went along to the discussion to see what is already being done to communicate climate science and also, what we can do as science communicators.

Although I do not research climate science (my research involves superconductors), there are many links between coffee and the climate: clouds of steam, turbulent movement, periodic waves in the cup and of course the greenhouse effect. Additionally, the risks that coffee faces from the effects of climate change are dire. Summarised in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR5), the risks to coffee are threefold, 1) from a warming climate 2) from more extreme weather events, 3) from pests that have increased due to (1) and (2).

Currently about 27million acres of the Earth’s land is used to cultivate coffee, most of which is grown by small scale farmers. The effects of warming mean that this area is going to decrease substantially. For us consumers this is going to mean a dent in our pockets but for the estimated 120 million people worldwide who depend on coffee growing for their livelihood, it is likely to be catastrophic.

room full of scientists and others, RMetS meeting, discussion time
A good crowd meant a lively discussion at “Avoiding Myth, Mayhem and Myopia”. What should we communicate about climate science and how?

The odd weather patterns that are going to be more common are also going to affect the coffee yield. Severe droughts are likely to happen more frequently (this year’s drought in Brazil has actually prompted the government there to consider importing (robusta) coffee beans). Moreover the combination of higher temperatures and greater rainfall that has been seen recently in Central America has ‘helped’ outbreaks of coffee rust while the berry borer beetle is also benefitting from the warmer climate worldwide (at the expense of the coffee crop).

Among climate scientists, the issues are clear (for the world rather than just for coffee). Climate change is already happening and it is caused by human activity in the form of greenhouse gas emissions. The problems are how to communicate this knowledge both to policy makers and industry and to the public so that we, as a society, can do something about it. What do each of these groups want to know and how best to reach them? There were discussions at the meeting about how to engage with politicians and to ensure that the message is properly transmitted so as to translate into action but for me (as a non-climate-scientist who drinks a lot of coffee), the interesting bit was about communicating with the public. In this sense it was great to see that the meeting had attracted a diverse audience with both Oxfam and the Green Party represented. Two questions dominated here: How is climate change affecting us now (/will affect us in the future)? And, what can we each do about it?

Bob Ward, Obama quote, climate change
The last generation: Bob Ward emphasising the urgent need for scientists to communicate effectively.

In terms of the second question, it seemed agreed that the best thing that we each can do is to reduce our carbon footprint. A concern echoed by the Society’s recent communiqué written with other professional bodies (that you can read here). Simple things like driving less or buying more efficient washing machines (or other household appliances when they need to be replaced) can make a difference. Of course, if you wanted to, you can have a go at calculating your carbon footprint using tools such as this guide by David MacKay (it is a lot easier than it may seem at first glance). It was this aspect of what ‘we’ can do that some audience members (including a Green Party representative) thought was a key thing that scientists working with the Royal Meteorological Society needed to communicate. Expect to hear far more about how you can make a difference.

In general, it seemed that there was a clear feeling that the scientists there wanted to communicate climate science and the science of climate change more insistently and more clearly. Indeed there was a rallying call for us all to increase our science communication by Bob Ward (the Policy and Communications Director at the Grantham Research Institute of the London School of Economics). But how should scientists communicate? Is there an intrinsic conflict between the language typically used by scientists and the urgency of the message? Should climate scientists use emotion in their discussions about climate change and what about issues of trust? All these are too much for this piece and so I shall leave those questions until next week, for now perhaps, it would be worth asking people who read this to suggest something that they are doing to reduce their carbon footprint, it doesn’t have to be much and it doesn’t need to be about coffee (though it would be nice if there were some coffee ideas) but please do share your ideas for reducing your carbon footprint, it is likely that they will be useful for others too.

Next week: Do we speak the same language? Is scientific language a help or a hindrance when it comes to communicating climate change?

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Coffee review Observations Science history slow Sustainability/environmental Tea

Seeing the light at Cable Co, Kensal Rise

coffee in Kensal Rise, Cable Co
Cable Co, coffee in Kensal Rise

It was fairly late on a February afternoon that we came upon Cable Co on Chamberlayne Road, (opposite Kensal Rise station). With a fairly ‘industrial’ type look, there are plenty of tables at the edge (and in the window) of the café at which to enjoy your coffee. There are also plenty of coffees on offer. Although I had an Americano, I noticed (too late) that pour-overs were available. Coffee is roasted by Climpson and Sons. As it was late in the day, the remaining cakes in the display case all looked to be nutty (or at least likely to be nutty) and so, sadly, I had to wait until I got home for my slice of cake. It was good coffee though, even without the cake, but in a bit of novelty the coffee came ‘deconstructed’, so I got to add the amount of water that I preferred, a nice touch.

Golden light from the setting sun streamed in through the windows (which is a navigation clue & tells you which side of the road this café is on). The effect of the Sun was to bathe the café in light and to silhouette our fellow coffee imbibers making the café take on a film-like atmosphere. The light had another effect though. The steam rising from both the jug of water and my espresso became far more visible than it would normally have been. I watched as the steam clouds formed vortices and turbulent patterns, one fluid (steam) moving through another (air). It was very difficult to catch this in a photograph, a fact that I took in support of my idea that it is impossible to catch the beautiful, beauty is necessarily transient (but my companion in these reviews took as evidence in favour of their idea that I really ought to use a “proper”, manual, camera and not my iPhone).

Steam, scattering, colour
Steam rising from hot water, seen at Cable Co, Kensal Rise

Still, those turbulent rising patterns of steam were visible and that implies that light was being scattered from the droplets of water in the steam. The size of the droplets influences the colour that we perceive when we view the steam clouds. If the clouds appear white, it is because the droplets that are scattering the sunlight have a diameter roughly equal to (or greater than) the wavelength of visible light. The wavelength of light varies between about 400 nm (violet) to 700 nm (red) which means that these water droplets have to be at least 700 nm across. To put this in perspective, the smallest particles of coffee in an espresso grind are about 10 μm diameter which is 14 x bigger than the droplets in the steam cloud.

Of course, how water droplets scatter light above a steaming coffee has implications for our understanding of why the clouds in the sky appear white (and why the sky is blue). Someone who did a lot of early work in understanding the way that light scattered off water droplets in air was John Tyndall (1820-1893). Tyndall was an experimentalist as well as a famous communicator of science. He regularly gave lectures at the Royal Institution that included demonstrations of the experiments that he himself was working on¹. One of these involved scattering light from water droplets (and therefore demonstrating why he thought the sky was blue).

Interior of Cable co
Light streaming into the cafe.

The idea is that sunlight scatters from water droplets differently depending on the diameter of the droplet. When the water droplets are approximately the diameter of the wavelength of red light, 700 nm, there is very little wavelength dependence to the light scattering. Practically this means that the droplets will appear white. If on the other hand, the droplets are much smaller than the wavelength of light, the light scattering starts to be wavelength dependent. So as the droplet gets smaller, blue light (short wavelength) gets scattered a lot by the droplets, while red light (long wavelength) is not scattered so much. This means that if you are looking at a cloud of steam formed by these small droplets at an angle between the sunlight and yourself (say, 90º), the cloud will appear to have a blue tinge. If on the other hand you look straight through the cloud at the sunlight coming in, it will have a red-hue because the blue light will have been scattered out of the cloud leaving only the red colours to come through.

The experiment can be easily demonstrated at home by using very dilute milk in water (see video here or further explanation here). If you put a few drops of milk in a glass of water and then look at the colour of the milky-water as a function of angle, you should see it change from red to blue as you move the glass relative to the light source. The connection with the blue sky seems clear, small particles (in-fact, they can be as small as molecules) scatter blue light preferentially and so, apart from at sunrise and sunset, the sky will appear blue. As Tyndall wrote:

“This experiment is representative, and it illustrates a general principle…. that particles of infinitesimal size, without any colour of their own, and irrespective of the optical properties exhibited by the substances in a massive state, are competent to produce the colour of the sky.”²

Cable Co is at 4 Bridge House, Chamberlayne Road, NW10 3NR

¹A Vision of Modern Science, John Tyndall and the role of the scientist in Victorian culture, U. DeYoung, Palgrage MacMillan, 2011

²Quoted in John Tyndall, Essays on a Natural Philosopher, Ed. WH. Brock, ND. McMillan, RC. Mollan, Royal Dublin Society, 1981

 

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html

 

Categories
Coffee cup science Coffee review General Observations Sustainability/environmental Tea

A cup of tea for a light bulb moment at Ginger and White, Hampstead

Coffee, Ginger and White, Hampstead
Coffee at Ginger and White, Hampstead

It was late afternoon by the time we stopped by Ginger and White in Hampstead. The warm weather meant that we could enjoy time spent sitting outdoors in the little alleyway in front of the café. We had been taking a friend around the various sights (and foodie places) of London and so stopped here before heading back home. The long black, cortado and soya latte were all very well done and, while the others had enjoyed a crepe at La Creperie de Hampstead just around the corner, I took the opportunity to try the excellent banana bread on offer at Ginger and White. There was a fairly good selection of cakes on offer, but sadly those that the staff could confidently affirm were nut free were far fewer. However, the moist and tasty banana bread was a good option anyway. Coffee was roasted by Square Mile and there were also Square Mile beans available for purchase should you wish to take some home with you. While the café was fairly busy, it was nevertheless a relaxing place to sit and watch the people of Hampstead go by.

The interior of Ginger and Whites
Everything is connected. From the lights to your cup of tea.

As I was looking around, wondering what the physics part of this cafe-physics review would be, I had what you could call a “light-bulb moment”. The walls of the building opposite were reflected in the windows of the café but looking inside, I noticed the lights which appeared to be LED lightbulbs set-back into the ceiling. Along with requiring less energy to power than conventional or halogen lightbulbs, LED lightbulbs in a café offer another, more poetic advantage for the café: they have a connection to the drinks being served and particularly tea. It’s all about diffusion.

At the heart of an LED light, there are two materials that form a junction. On one side of the junction is a semiconductor material that conducts electricity by means of electrons. Electrons conduct electricity in metals and are the ‘normal’ way that we consider electrical current to  be carried. On the other side of the junction is a different semiconductor, one that still conducts electricity but this time does so with carriers called ‘holes’. You can view the electrons as having a negative charge and the holes as having a positive charge.

tea bag, tea cup, diffusion, turbulence
What happens when you put a tea bag into a cup of cold water. How long until the water becomes ‘tea’?

But what happens at the junction? Is there really a sharp barrier between these two types of material? Think about putting a tea bag in a cup of cold water, does the tea bag just sit there or does it slowly, very slowly, start to diffuse tea into the cold water? It is a similar thing for the two materials. Slowly the electrons diffuse into the hole material and the holes into the electron material. In fact, mathematically, the same equations describe the process in the junction as in the tea cup. But unlike tea, in the LED, the holes and electrons have an electric charge associated with them and so, as they diffuse away from the junction, they set up an electric field across the junction. It is this electric field that eventually stops any further diffusion of electrons or holes across the junction and sets up the conditions necessary for LEDs to emit light. It would be like having a tea bag that diffuses tea into the cup until it is perfectly brewed and no further.

Of course, there is much more than this to understanding LEDs. If you’re interested, there is further information here. I find it fascinating however that what happens in your tea cup, is also happening on many different scales in many places in the universe. And of course, in the lighting of cafés and coffee houses around the world.

Ginger and Whites is at 4a-5a Perrins Court, NW3 1QS

 

Categories
General Observations slow Sustainability/environmental Tea

Environmentalism through V60s

Is there a parallel between trying to live more sustainably and the art, or science, of coffee appreciation?

San Sebastian via Aeropress
Enjoying a coffee prepared in an Aeropress at Alchemy

Consider the way that we experience our coffees. Who would not wish that more people took time to enjoy great coffees, perhaps single-origin pour-overs, precisely measured and lovingly made, obviously without milk. But we know from experience that not everyone is ready to take the risk of trying a new café and paying that bit extra for a coffee they do not know. Our own coffee journey may illustrate this point. My student days were filled with supermarket (cheapest brand) instant and machine coffee (20p between lectures). Slowly I graduated (quite literally, a well known chain opened close to the university in my final year) to grande lattes, flavoured with nutmeg and similar drinks. A smaller chain introduced me to macchiatos and black coffees before I found a start-up roasting company on the internet and suddenly my mornings were transformed with the fragrance of freshly roasted and freshly ground, aromatic and lovely coffee.

Each step I took introduced me to better, more interesting coffees. New coffee roasters opened offering different levels of roast and different types of bean. Great independent cafés started up which featured coffees brewed in new and innovative ways (the Aeropress was only invented in 2005). Social media and more traditional friend circles introduced me to people who really take time to savour their coffee and which in turn has enabled me to grow in my own coffee appreciation. Would I have jumped from instant to pour-over? Probably not. And yet, I know that I am still on a coffee-appreciation journey: There is still so much more to learn, so many new things to experience, it is a journey I’m very happy to have embarked upon.

kettle, V60, spout, pourover, v60 preparation
How much CO2 does over-filling your kettle really produce?

So what is the link with environmentalism or indeed science? Well, how many times have you heard that if only we filled the kettle just to the correct amount, we would save so many tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually? A counter argument points out that given how much pollution we are actually responsible for, merely correctly filling the kettle (or avoiding takeaway cups) is going to have negligible environmental benefit. It is here that I think that the analogy comes in.

It is true that, when you tot up your daily energy consumption, the use of a kettle is not a very big part of it*. For me, even when I overestimated my kettle use (and underestimated the energy costs involved in transporting the kettle/coffee etc. to my kitchen as this became difficult to estimate), my energy use coming from the kettle was only 2% of my daily average. If I only considered the energy consumption due to electricity per day, of course the contribution of the kettle would be higher but it is still not that big a deal.

Over-boiling the kettle does not seem to make that much of a difference when compared to the difference we will have to make in order to limit climate change. Which takes us to the very valid argument that “if everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little”†. But, is it worth being just a little bit more optimistic on this? Let’s bring in the coffee.

Earth from space, South America, coffee
One planet. One home.
The Blue Marble, Credit, NASA: Image created by Reto Stockli with the help of Alan Nelson, under the leadership of Fritz Hasler

It is all too easy to breeze through life not considering our environmental actions, I’d argue that this is the instant coffee stage. As we start to become more aware of the environment, we perform small actions (buying – and of course reusing – a keepcup, only filling the kettle just-so). That’s great, we’re drinking pumpkin-spice lattes. It may not be the best coffee we can get but we are enjoying it. Analogously, as we increase our environmental awareness (and subsequent responsibility) we seem to find that small things become more enjoyable, and even more rewarding. The effort involved in trying to improve our environmental behaviour brings benefits in terms of the amount we enjoy or the appreciation of the things that we have. The small step brought about by considering our kettle use, enables us to make the larger steps that are necessary to behave more environmentally. Trying to make big changes quickly may, in some ways be great (it would indeed be better if everyone appreciated single-origin pour-overs without milk), but it is unlikely to work. To my mind, even if people really started to appreciate good pumpkin-spice lattes that would be a step away from the horrors of instant and towards a better future!

But is an environmental pumpkin spice latte enough? Can I say that I now behave in a properly sustainable and environmental way? Sadly not. Exactly as with the coffee, I am far too aware that I’m on a sustainability journey: There is still so much more to learn, so many new things to experience, it is a journey I’m very happy to have embarked upon. Some do a lot better with the environmentalism, some are still drinking instant coffee, but small steps help us to make the large steps that are going to be needed. Back in the 1990s, as more people began drinking flavoured, grande lattes, so it became possible for the small independent cafes to open up and improve the coffees on offer. We need to move on from pumpkin spice environmentalism, let’s hope we make the steps soon enough.

*You can easily calculate your own energy use with the guidance in David MacKay’s excellent book “Sustainable Energy – without the hot air” that he made fully available online (click the link). In a series of easy steps and estimates that you can make, he helps you to calculate your average daily energy consumption (which can be translated, if you so wished, to a personal carbon dioxide emissions calculation). I would highly recommend going through and looking at your own consumption to see how big an effect, for you personally, over-filling the kettle is.

† Quote from “Sustainable Energy – without the hot air” by David MacKay, UIT Cambridge Ltd, 2009

Categories
Coffee review General Observations slow Sustainability/environmental Tea

Environmentalism inside and out at Farmstand, Covent Garden

Farmstand Drury Lane
Farmstand on Drury Lane

How can we live sustainably, buying locally, being mindful of our ecological footprint and still drink coffee? A recent trip to Farmstand on Drury Lane revealed a café conscious of its environmental responsibilities, somewhere that is trying to help us to make a difference while still enjoying good food and great coffee. Is it possible for us to have our coffee and drink it? The people behind Farmstand certainly seem to think so.

The bare brick walls inside the spacious Farmstand have a certain rustic charm that serves to emphasise the environmental concerns of the café. A focus on local, free range meat and GM free vegetables means that this is definitely a place to be considered when looking for a lunch spot (though on this occasion, we only tried the coffee). Coffee is obviously not locally grown but is roasted by Workshop which is, relatively speaking, just down the road. Tea meanwhile comes from Postcard teas, just up the street. Water is complementary and is provided on tap so as to reduce plastic waste. The service was friendly and with such a bright and airy feel it is a very pleasant space to enjoy an Americano (though I imagine it is fairly crowded at lunchtimes). However, the Americano was served in a take-away cup (when I specified I was staying in). After a bit of digging on their website, I discovered that they use compostable and/or recyclable packaging sourced from London Bio Packaging. However, as it is not easy to either recycle nor to compost cups in regular waste collection (including recycling collections), it would be interesting to know details of how they dispose of their cups so as to know how they reconcile this with the otherwise careful environmental policy.

Interior vertical gardening
Green wall inside Farmstand

As you enter the café, there is a staircase on the left hand side. Potted plants are fixed to the railings making what seems to be almost a miniature green wall. A great way to get houseplants into a small space, this seemed a small scale example of the green walls that are starting to pop up around our cities. Green walls are vertical gardens. They can be grown either with climbing plants or with a second structure on the wall that supports the hundreds of plants. Along with an aesthetic appeal (certainly true of the structure at Farmstand), these green walls have environmental benefits too.

A big environmental problem in cities is particulate pollution from exhausts. Specifically, particulate matter that is less than 10 μm diameter (think Turkish coffee grind) can irritate the lungs and cause health problems for the city’s inhabitants. Particulates less than 2.5 μm diameter are even more dangerous to health. Worldwide, in 2012, 3.7 million early deaths were associated with poor air quality. In London, a 2010 study showed that approximately 4000 deaths per year were the result of exhaust fumes. Which brings us to the first reason that green walls in cities may be such a good thing: Plants adsorb the pollutants.

Green wall Singapore
A green wall at the Ocean Financial Centre in Singapore, Image shared under cc license (attrib. share alike) by smuconlaw.

Over a three month period, a study by Imperial College showed that a single green wall on Edgware Road tube station had removed 515 g of particulate matter from the atmosphere. Using a mix of plants on the wall was found to increase the air turbulence around the wall and so increase the adsorption of the pollutants. Of course, different plants performed differently (in terms of their ability to remove particulate matter from the air). One of the plants on the wall (Convolvulus cneorum) could take out up to 2.73±0.16 g/m² of particulate matter*. On the other hand, another plant on the wall (Hedera helix) took out much less, removing only 0.28±0.02 g/m². However, we know Hedera helix by another name: Ivy. And ivy plants can produce a lot of foliage per plant very quickly. Convolvulus cneorum on the other hand, is a small plant with small leaves. While its efficiency could be very high, the amount of pollution it can remove may not be as great as an ivy plant, purely as a consequence of its leaf size.

Which brings us to questions of aesthetics and practicality. The wall at Edgware Road is planted with many different types of plant in order to produce an effect that reduces pollution while also being good to look at. Similar walls have sprouted up all over the world. However, for short term projects that require a large amount of foliage quickly, planting ivy can be a good option as a pollutant remover. Some of the temporary structures built along Park Lane for the Crossrail project are now covered with ivy. Although I had initially thought that this was due to a lack of weeding, it turns out that this is part of a step towards pollution reduction in our cities (modelling data has indicated that these green walls can reduce the local particulate pollution by 10-20% depending on the geometry of the wall and the plant species growing).

A small step perhaps, but one that is definitely in the right direction. The green wall at Farmstand could therefore be said to illustrate the idea that if we are to make a difference to our external world, we must start by reforming our own interior one. We need to make green walls not green wash and we can start by paying attention to what we plant inside and out.

Farmstand is at 42 Drury Lane, WC2B 5AJ

*The study looked at particulate matter between 2.5 µm and 10µm diameter (i.e. PM(2.5)-PM(10)).

 

 

Categories
cafe with good nut knowledge Coffee review Observations Science history Sustainability/environmental

Counting the caloric at Jaz & Jul’s Chocolate House, Chapel Market

Jaz Jules chocolate house
Jaz and Jul’s, The Chocolate House on Chapel Market

The London coffee houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have entered history as Penny Universities, places of debate and centres of news. Together with the (scientifically based) Grecian, there was Jonathan’s in Exchange Alley (origin of the stock exchange) and Lloyd’s on Tower Street (associated with insurance). But along side these coffee houses there were the chocolate houses, Whites and Ozinda’s on St James’ St and the Cocoa Tree in Pall Mall. White’s in particular developed such a reputation that it features in Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress (which can be seen at Sir John Soane’s museum).

So it is an interesting bit of history repeating to find Jaz & Jul’s, a chocolate house on Chapel Market. The interior here is very far from Hogarth’s rendering of White’s. Here, light fittings hang from the ceiling like drops of chocolate about to melt into the café while photographs of cocoa plants and farms adorn the walls. Moreover the emphasis on social responsibility, including in sourcing, mean that this establishment is worlds away from the debauched shenanigans at White’s. Their coffee is roasted and supplied by Monmouth while the cakes are hand made and, needless to say, very chocolatey. The light and fluffy chocolate-Pimms cake arrived with my coffee presented on a plate and matching cup that reminded me of a mint-chocolate-chip ice cream.

Interior of Jaz and Jules Chapel Market
The chocolate counter at Jaz and Jul’s

The side of the counter was tiled to resemble a bar of chocolate, which immediately reminded me of the physics and chemistry of chocolate crystallisation. However, the physics connection of this cafe-physics review is a bit more lateral than that. Soon after I had enjoyed my incredibly chocolatey cake at Jaz & Jul’s, a study was released which showed that Britons were significantly under-reporting their daily calorie intake. Could it be that the obesity epidemic is a result of us eating too much rather than merely exercising too little? Apparently, rather than consume the (recommended) levels of 2500 kcal for men and 2000 kcal for women, many people were eating up to 3000 calories per day. Everything in moderation of course and there was plenty of room in my own calorie count for that great piece of cake (honestly). But the word ‘calorie’ turns out to have a connection with chocolate in a more unexpected way.

Calorie comes from the Latin, calor, meaning heat which in turn hints at how we used to think about heat itself. While we now think of heat as energy, which is why it doesn’t even strike us to equate the ‘energy’ in the chocolate cake with the number of kilo-calories in it, this is not how heat was always viewed. In fact, in the eighteenth century, about the time of the old chocolate houses, heat was thought of as a type of fluid, caloric. Caloric was thought to be able to flow in and out of all substances. When something got hot it was because the caloric flowed into it, when something got cold, it was because the caloric had leaked out. Caloric theory was in many ways very successful in understanding heat and heat processes. For example, the theory easily explained thermal expansion, if a fluid had to flow into something in order for that thing to warm up, then surely, the fluid has to occupy some space, the object must expand to hold it!

Mint choc chip cutlery
Coffee with the Chocolate-Pimms cake.

One area that was tricky for caloric theory though was the fact that friction could cause something to heat up. Such heat generation is crucial for our extraction of chocolate. Once harvested from the plant and cleaned, the cocoa bean is first roasted then shelled to leave the cocoa ‘nibs’. These nibs are then ground more finely. As they are being ground, the friction caused by grinding is enough to cause sufficient heat to melt the cocoa butter in the nibs which is then extracted and retained for later use*. How could you explain this heating if you thought of heat as a fluid? The traditional explanation was that as the two objects rubbed against each other (in this case, nib and stone grinder), the caloric fluid would be squeezed out, it would appear as if heat had been generated.

Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814), disagreed with this explanation of heat. In the course of a colourful career he had been involved in manufacturing cannons in Bavaria. Rumford had noticed that a lot of heat was generated each time a cannon shaft was bored out. The heat produced continued as long as the grinding continued. If the heat were due to the cannon leaking caloric, surely there would be a point at which the cannon stopped getting any hotter. Yet this did not happen. Rumford suggested (correctly) that instead what was happening was that the energy generated by the boring was being transferred into the metal of the cannon, causing microscopic motion.

Although the heat as motion/energy idea eventually caught on, caloric in some ways still survives in the name that we give to our food energy intake. And so we can return to the cake, could it be that spending time thinking about the caloric in the cake can justify the calories consumed eating it? Sadly the jury is out on whether thinking counts as calorie counting exercise. It seems that the brain’s energy consumption is already so great (at 20% of our resting metabolic rate), that intense thinking does not add too much to the energy consumed by the brain. So we’ll need another excuse and I don’t think we have to look far. The coffee and chocolate at Jaz & Jul’s is delicious enough to justify a significant chunk of your daily calorie count, just based on considerations of taste. Everything in moderation!

 

Jaz and Jul’s is at 1 Chapel Market, N1 9EZ

*”Chocolate: A Global History”, by Sarah Moss and Alexander Badenoch, published by Reaktion Books, 2009

 

Categories
Coffee review General Observations Science history slow Sustainability/environmental

Life at the Coffee Jar

CoffeeJar_exteriorI had been waiting for an opportunity to try the Coffee Jar for a fair while. It is not that it is in a remote location, it is in fact situated on Parkway just five minutes walk from Camden or Primrose Hill. Nonetheless it feels as if it needed a special trip to get there (and, though this is pre-empting the end of this cafe-physics review, it does deserve such a ‘special trip’). Inside, there is seating at the window and running along one wall, and although it is not the smallest of cafés, it is certainly a ‘cosy’ one. This is not intended as an estate agent’s euphemism but instead to emphasise the additional meanings of this word to convey a warmth and friendliness about the space that the Coffee Jar definitely has. So far, we have been twice (see, the ‘special trip’ is worth it!). The coffee comes from Monmouth and so unsurprisingly, on the two occasions I had a coffee there (Americano and Soya Latte), it was very well done and enjoyable. At the front of the counter are a wide selection of home made cakes and cookies. While this presentation can be awkward for allergy sufferers (nutty cakes or cakes with loose nuts on top are placed side by side with the nut free options which could give contamination issues), the cookies were very good (more on the cookies later).

As befits the name, hand painted jars and coffee mugs decorate the end of the tables (and can be purchased should you wish). Individual art pieces decorate the walls while the window is painted with a scene that is somehow mirrored (shadowed?) in the ink prints on the take-away cups. All in all, there is plenty to notice in this “cosy” space. And so it took a fairly long time before I noticed the fish that was dangling above my head.
robot fisherman, robot fisherwoman, coffee jar camden
Apologies for the blurry photo but you can see the robot fisherman on the shelf.

Yes, this seemed an odd thing to me too, so I checked and indeed, a wooden fish was suspended on a string from something hidden on the shelf above my seat. At this point, an opportunity arose to go and sit at the window and so I was able to turn and look properly at the cause of the suspended wooden fish which was actually a toy robot. It just gets more surreal. But indeed, on the shelf above the seats against the wall was a toy robot fishing, a wooden fish hanging at the end of his (her?) line.

A robot that is fishing can prompt a large number of questions which seem to me to be at the intersection of science and philosophy. To what extent has automation improved our lives? Is it a good or a bad thing to use robots in jobs traditionally done by humans? Moving away from robots and towards computers, what about artificial intelligence? Much has been written about artificial intelligence in recent years. There is some angst about whether robots will come to take-over the world with an ability to think that far surpasses our human ability. Alternatively, there are people who look to artificial intelligence with the hope that it will help us drive cars or investigate pollution or all manner of other (to a greater or lesser degree) useful things. One test that has been suggested as a way of establishing whether any particular computer, or artificial intelligence, can think is the Turing test proposed in 1950 by Alan Turing. A prize set up to reward the first computer “chatbot” that could reliably mislead human judges into thinking that it was itself a human (the Loebner prize) has so far not been won (a prize is awarded each year for the most convincing chatbot but so far, none has been so reliably convincing as a human to win the top, “gold” prize).
soya latte at the coffee jar camden
Unusually I had a soya latte.

But the robot on the shelf was not represented as thinking but as fishing, an occupation that is associated with relaxation. This robot was not just thinking, it was taking time out to relax; it was represented as being alive and sentient. This prompts a rather different question to that of merely intelligence: At what point do we say that something is living? How can we define life? As could perhaps be expected, NASA has taken some time to consider this question. As they say on their website:

“Comparing the semantic task [of defining life] to the ancient Hindu story of identifying an elephant by having each of six blind men touch only the tail, the trunk, or the leg, what answer a biologist might give can differ dramatically from the answer given by a theoretical physicist.”

Which may make you wonder well, what would a theoretical physicist say about how we could define life? Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) had a very interesting, physics-based, definition of life. Although he is now perhaps more famous for his equation or his cat, in 1944 he wrote a book called “What is Life” (opens as pdf). To very briefly summarise, the argument goes that the tendency of all inanimate objects is towards equilibrium. A hot cup of coffee will lose heat to its immediate environment and so reach the same temperature as its surroundings, a small amount of blue food colouring at the bottom of a glass of water will eventually colour the entire glass a paler blue. To be alive is to defer this state of equilibrium for to achieve equilibrium is the same thing as death. Schrödinger argued that rather than merely consume energy, living things consumed negative entropy from their food-stuff. Entropy is a quantity introduced with the theory of thermodynamics. It is often taken as a measure of the order in a system (though there are caveats to that). The second law of thermodynamics states that for a closed system, the entropy of the system will either increase or stay the same. This suggests that to avoid equilibrium, or equivalently to avoid death, the living thing must consume order (or negative entropy) and somehow stave off this tendency to maximum entropy. To answer the objection that it would be easy to consume negative entropy by eating diamonds (which are highly ordered crystals) and so therefore that there has to be more to life than this, Schrödinger expanded on the thermodynamics of his argument. That bit gets quite technical and so is another reason that, if you are interested, it is worth getting hold of the book.

 

So to return to one of the first questions but phrase it in a slightly different way. Could a robot cookie maker replace the “home-made” cookies that were on offer in the Coffee Jar? It turns out that this is a subject that my often-times cafe-physics review companion (let’s call them J) has quite an opinion about. We visited the Coffee Jar twice partly because of the cookies! It seems to me that J would not have been impressed by the cookies were they robotically mass manufactured. There was something very appealing in the home made quality of them. So, there we go, one of the questions answered neither scientifically nor philosophically but on the very reasonable basis that home made cookies taste and look better. Do let me know if you agree if and when you visit the Coffee Jar.
The Coffee Jar is at 83 Parkway, NW1 7PP
“What is life?” Erwin Schrödinger, Cambridge University Press, first published 1944, my edition published 2013
Categories
General Observations slow Sustainability/environmental

Plastic free coffee?

a take away cup
There’s plenty of plastic in coffee & it’s not just in the obvious take-away cups.

So we’ve probably all done it, walked into a coffee shop and purchased a take-away coffee while in a rush to get elsewhere. It’s the moment that our desired commitment to environmentally responsible behaviour clashes with our (briefly stronger) desire for sustenance on the move. Using a keep-cup (or similar) would avoid this bit of single-use plastic but even so, is this the only plastic that you encounter when you enjoy a coffee? Actually, once you start to notice it, you will find single-use plastic in a number of surprising places.

An initiative called “Plastic Free July” aims to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of single-use plastic as well as to challenge us to do something about it. So, partly as an educational exercise, I signed up to the Plastic Free July, not because plastic is always bad, (there are arguably some very good, even environmental, reasons to use plastic, see below) but because plastic is a substance that takes a long time to break down once discarded and we use it so often even without thinking. So, before revealing just how easy – or hard – it has been to eliminate single use plastic from everyday life for the past couple of weeks, it’s worth taking a look at the problems, benefits and occurrence of plastic in our lives. Particularly while we are enjoying a tea or coffee.

Some definitions

Plastic comes in many forms and Plastic Free July does not aim to avoid all of them. It is single use plastic that is the concern: Bits of plastic wrapping, plastic bags, aroma valves. Things that are used once and then discarded. Can you avoid using these, even for one week or even just one day? Why not sign up and commit yourself to trying to find out.

Plastic Problems

Earth from space, South America, coffee
One planet. One home.
The Blue Marble, Credit, NASA: Image created by Reto Stockli with the help of Alan Nelson, under the leadership of Fritz Hasler

Two of the major issues with our use of plastics are the problems of littering and that of degradability, particularly when that litter finds its way into the oceans. Between 60-80% of marine litter is plastic. It can cause the deaths of marine life not just through its being eaten (thereby causing internal injury or malnutrition), but also by entangling sea creatures and so causing death through drowning or other injury. Moreover, the bits of plastic that float around our oceans can provide a home to various micro-organisms transporting them around the world to areas of the planet that they would not ordinarily have been able to reach.

Nor is it just a problem for the oceans. Plastic takes many centuries to decompose and although there are plastics that decompose more quickly (oxo-biodegradable and compostable, more details below), clearly there is a need to reduce the amount of plastic we throw away. A further problem with plastics is that their manufacture requires the use of a limited resource. 4-5% of global petroleum production is used for the manufacture of plastic∗. But nor is it just petroleum products, the thing that makes carrier bags opaque is an additive called TiO2. It is therefore somewhat sobering to realise that 25% of the plastics manufactured in the US are used in packaging* and 37% of the plastics produced are for disposable items. Clearly we have room to live less wastefully here.

Why it’s not all bad

paper bag roasted coffee
Is it better to swap to paper packaging? It may depend on what problem you’re trying to solve.

Although there is a big problem with plastic waste, a different environmental problem has arguably benefited from our use of plastic packaging: The greenhouse effect. Consider the way that ground coffee is often sold in a supermarket. Frequently the coffee comes in metallised plastic packaging complete with plastic air-valve (or aroma valve). Alternatively, coffee can be packaged in a steel can (as used by a well known coffee roasting blend). Steel is 100% recyclable and so is good for the degradability/litter problem. However it is heavy and cylindrical. This means that to transport an equivalent amount of coffee in steel cans costs more, both in terms of economic and environmental costs, than the lighter, less bulky plastic of the alternative*.

What about paper packaging? It is interesting that even here, the situation is not clear-cut. A study concerning the greenhouse gas emissions involved with the manufacture and transportation of different sorts of shopping bag had what may be a surprising conclusion. In order to achieve a lower CO2 footprint than a standard plastic shopping bag re-used once as a bin-liner, a paper shopping bag would have to be re-used 4x while a cloth bag would have to be re-used a staggering 173x. You may well argue (as I have) that it is still better, environmentally, to buy your coffee in paper packaging, but if thinking purely in terms of the CO2 emissions, you may want to try to find a way to re-use the coffee bag a few times.

Lastly, the litter and degradation problem need not be insurmountable. In recent years, various manufacturers have sought to make plastic degrade more rapidly than ordinary plastic. Oxo-biodegradable plastic has additives in it that, when exposed to UV light, eg. from the Sun, help the (otherwise perfectly ordinary) plastic to completely biodegrade. The process takes a controllable amount of time that can even be as little as 2 years. Compostable plastic too is being developed but there should be caveats on the name. “Compostable” is defined as “industrially compostable” (meaning it degrades if held at a steady 58C), it does not necessarily mean that it composts in your compost heap.

There’s plastic in my coffee?

air valve, plastic, environmental coffee packaging
Aroma valves: are they worth the environmental cost?

So, we’re aware of the problem and want to do something about it but how much is single use plastic really a problem for coffee (or tea) drinkers? Take-away cups are the obvious source of single-use plastic, but plastic can be found in many places as we enjoy our brew. If we are having coffee in a café (even if it is not take out), how about the spoon for the sugar, plates for the cakes or even wrapping around the chocolate bars? If you drink your coffee with milk (cow, soy or almond) it will often come in plastic bottles, yes these could be recycled but would it be better if they were made from something else? (It is an interesting fact that more plastic was sent for recycling in the UK than was used by consumers†).

An easy way of reducing your plastic use would be to use your own mug as a take-away cup (keep-cups for example are designed to be of the correct size for the cafe industry). And there may even be other advantages to you in bringing along your own cup: For Danny S Parker, taking along his own cup for his coffee allows him to better enjoy the coffee, as he says “If you choose a wide mouth cup… the involvement of the nose in the taste on the tongue will accentuate flavour and enjoyment.” Reducing your plastic consumption could mean that even a take-away coffee can provide a moment to enjoy your brew.

What about if you only ever drank coffee at home? Where’s the plastic there? Well, how do you buy your coffee? Do you buy from a coffee roaster that insists on using bags with ‘aroma valves’? These valves cannot be recycled currently and so inevitably contribute to plastic waste. Is this packaging really necessary for the way that you buy your coffee? (See here for an interesting taste comparison of coffee stored in bags with/without aroma valves). Meanwhile, the coffee itself is frequently supplied in a metallised plastic packaging, does the roaster you buy from try to minimise the environmental cost by using recycled/oxo-bio/compostable/paper packaging? Why not ask them?

And tea drinkers, you do not get away with it! There’s plastic involved in tea drinking too. Tea bags are often supplied in cardboard packaging that is then wrapped in plastic, and even loose leaf tea can come in paper bags with plastic windows or metallised plastic bags. Worryingly, even tea bags themselves can occasionally be made of a plastic material that does not break down in a composting bin‡. Plastic truly gets everywhere.

An honest appraisal of how my plastic free July has gone so far

San Sebastian via Aeropress
Giving up plastic can mean taking the opportunity to enjoy your coffee properly.

So, nearly halfway through July and my attempts at being “plastic-free” are mixed. Some things are relatively easy to change, a metal tea strainer and loose leaf tea replaced the tea bags when they ran out. The coffee I use at home comes in paper packaging from Roasting House. Other things such as bottles of shampoo could be replaced by shampoo bars (like a bar of soap only for shampoo). Even the soy milk I use at home was easily exchanged for a home-made oat-milk.

However, some things have been difficult. Shopping particularly is not very plastic-free friendly. Although there is advice on taking containers with you in order to buy meat, fish or cheese from the counter in a plastic-free way, I am not sure that this would work in my local supermarket and anyway, they have to weigh the meat/fish/cheese which will involve them putting it on a plastic bag on the scales. Just because I do not walk away with plastic in my hand does not mean that I am not responsible for its use. Cooking oil too frequently comes in plastic bottles and, given the increased weight and therefore transportation costs involved in glass packaging, perhaps this is an example of a good use of plastic. An attempt to move away from aluminium-lined, plastic tube toothpaste to plastic-free tooth tabs has been complicated by the fact that the tooth-tabs are supplied in a plastic bottle. And I’m afraid that I am partial to a bottle of beer occasionally even though they do have plastic lined metal caps.

So, my plastic-free July has been a bit mixed but certainly not single use plastic free (so far). But, it has been worth it in order to really see just how ubiquitous single-use plastic is in our day to day living. Is it possible for you to cut down just a little bit on the plastic that you use every day? Why not sign up to Plastic Free July and see where your challenges lie.

If you are already signed up to Plastic Free July or if you are trying to live in a plastic-reducing way generally I’d love to hear how it’s going. Also if you have an opinion on the use of plastic in the coffee industry (either in cafes or by roasters) do let me know.

*Plastics and the Environment, AL Andrady (Ed), Wiley-Interscience, 2003

† The study was done in 2006.

‡ I was alerted to this initially by a friend’s comment that certain pyramid-type tea bags never seemed to break down on their compost heap.

Categories
General slow Sustainability/environmental

Beautiful coffee

beauty in a coffee, coffee beauty
Interference patterns on bubbles in a coffee cup.

In the UK Science Museum’s library there is a book, written in 1910, by Jean Perrin called “Brownian Movement and Molecular reality”. To some extent, there is nothing surprising about the book. It describes a phenomenon that occurs in your coffee cup and the author’s own attempts to understand it. Nonetheless, this little book is quite remarkable. It is perhaps hard, from our perspective in 2016, to imagine that at the time of Perrin’s work, the idea of the existence of molecules in water was still controversial. It was even debated whether it was legitimate to hypothesise the existence of molecules (which were, almost by definition, un-detectable). However, none of that is really relevant to the question confronting today’s Daily Grind. Today, the question is how can this book help us to find beauty in a coffee cup?

What does a one hundred year old book have to do with finding beauty in a coffee cup? Perrin received the Nobel Prize in 1926 for his work establishing the molecular origins of Brownian motion and, associated with it, his determination of the value of Avogadro’s constant. It is perhaps why he wrote the book. (The experiment that he used to do this is described in a previous Daily Grind article that can be found here.) It is in his description though, both of the theory and the experiments involving Brownian motion that this little book is relevant for today. One word repeatedly crops up in Perrin’s description of Brownian motion. It comes up when he describes the theory. It comes up when he describes other people’s experiments. It comes up when he describes bits of the maths of the theory. The word? Beautiful*.

Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi,
by Elliott & Fry, vintage print, (1930s),
Thanks to National Portrait Gallery for use of this image.

Throughout history, many scientists have recognised, and worked for, the beauty that they see in the science around them. In a 2007 TED talk, Murray Gell-Mann said

“What is striking and remarkable is in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.”

So it is interesting that, although we may agree that scientific theories can be “beautiful” or “elegant”, we do not seem to have a way of quantifying what precisely beauty is. It is similar for those things that are beautiful that we find in every day life. The beauty of a sunset, or the way the light catches the ripples on the surface of a lake, these are things that we recognise as beautiful without being able to articulate what it is about them that makes them so. Instead we recognise beauty as something that strikes us when we encounter it. Elaine Scarry has talked about this as a “de-centering” that we experience when we come across beauty. Scarry writes that, when we encounter the beautiful:

“It is not that we cease to stand at the center of the world, for we never stood there. It is that we cease to stand even at the center of our own world”.¹

It is therefore quite concerning that she goes on to suggest that conversations about beauty (of paintings, poems etc) have been banished from study in the humanities “…we speak about their beauty only in whispers.”¹ This does not seem to have happened yet in science where it is still common to hear about a beautiful equation or an elegant experiment. But is there a creeping ‘ideological utilitarianism” in the scientific community? According to Michael Polanyi ²

“Ideological utilitarianism censures Archimedes today for speaking lightly of his own practical inventions and his passion for intellectual beauty, which he expressed by desiring his grave to be marked by his most beautiful geometrical theorem, is dismissed as an aberration.”²

While we may recoil from this sentiment, what do we write (or expect to read) in grant applications, scientific papers, popular science or even scientific outreach? How often is the utility of a piece of research emphasised rather than its elegance?

Earth from space, South America, coffee
Does an appreciation of beauty help with a wider understanding of justice and environmental concerns?
The Blue Marble, Credit, NASA: Image created by Reto Stockli with the help of Alan Nelson, under the leadership of Fritz Hasler

Another interesting question to ponder is whether our ability to appreciate (and discuss) beauty has wider ramifications. As many others have argued before her, Scarry suggests that the appreciation of the beauty in the world connects with our sense of justice¹. Recently the Pope too, in his great environmental encyclical, Laudato Si’ wrote³:

“If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple.”

Could it be true that part of the motivation that we need to change our ecological habits or stimulate our search for wider social justice is enhanced by our ability to slow down and appreciate the beautiful, wherever and whenever we find it?

So to return to our coffee. Is there something, anything, about our coffee or our tea that gives us such a radical de-centering experience? Can we, like Jean Perrin, appreciate the subtle beauty of the molecular interactions in our cup? Do we appreciate the moment as we prepare our brew? Or are we ideological utilitarians, seeing in our cup just another caffeine fix?

 

* Technically, the book in the Science Museum Library is a translation of Perrin’s work by Frederick Soddy. It is possible that it is Soddy’s translation rather than Perrin’s work itself that uses the word ‘beautiful’ repeatedly. It would be interesting to read Perrin’s book in its original French.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the Science Museum Library for being such a valuable resource and to the staff at the library for being so helpful.

 

“Brownian movement and molecular reality”, Jean Perrin, translated by F. Soddy, Taylor and Francis Publishers (1910)

1 Elaine Scarry, “On Beauty and Being Just”, Duckworth Publishers, 2006

2 Michael Polanyi, “Personal Knowledge, towards a post-critical philosophy” University of Chicago Press, 1958

3 §215 Laudato Si’, Pope Francis, 2015