Tag: coffee

Categories
General Observations Science history slow

(Im)perfect reflections on coffee

science in a V60
Have you noticed droplets like these dancing on your drip-brewed coffee?

With the recent coffees from Hundred House and Quarter Horse, there have been many opportunities to observe the coffee brewing in the V60 in the mornings. The steam rising from the filter paper, the different ways different coffees bloom and out-gas, the droplets that skim the surface of the coffee and bounce off the walls of the jug and then, of course, the many different effects with light. Watching the dancing droplets (an explanation of why they may dance is here), it is perhaps not immediately obvious that you could form a connection between these, the light reflections and an insight into something you may have noticed while passing through customs. And yet the connection is definitely there.

The connection is formed through a technique called Raman spectroscopy. Named after Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1888-1970) who discovered the Raman effect in 1928. As the ‘spectroscopy’ part of the name suggests, it is a technique that offers a way to identify different chemicals, or components, in a substance. For coffee it has been used both as a non-destructive technique to determine the kahweol content of coffee beans and hence help as a test for identifying rogue robusta in arabica beans and as a way of analysing the brewed coffee. But what is it, how does watching a brewing V60 help to understand it and why would you want to know about Raman spectroscopy while travelling through an airport?

beauty in a coffee, coffee beauty
A collection of bubbles on the side of the coffee. What happens when one of the dancing droplets collides with a group of bubbles?

Generally, it helps to begin with coffee and the link is the way in which the droplets bounce off the side of the jug. Brew a coffee and watch them (if you are a non-coffee drinker, you could try dripping hot water through a filter paper into a jug). When one of these droplets hits the wall of the V60 container, it generally bounces back with a trajectory expected for an elastic collision. Given the relative masses of the droplet and the jug, the speed of the reflected droplet is essentially unchanged (even if its direction is reversed). This is similar to what we would normally expect for light. We are used to considering light as waves but because of the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics it is equally valid to consider light as a stream of particles called photons. As the photons hit a surface and are reflected off, they recoil with the same energy that they initially had, just like the droplets in the coffee. But now look more closely at the dancing droplets. Normally they hit the walls and not each other but just occasionally, they can hit either another droplet or a group of bubbles that have formed on the coffee surface. In these cases, rather than get reflected as before, the droplets transfer some of their energy to the collection of bubbles causing them to move and to wobble. And when the droplet is reflected back, it has a noticeably slower speed (and so we could say a lower kinetic energy) than when it initially danced into its collision. Where is the analogue with light?

When we think about a coffee bean, we probably think about something that is about 1cm oval, brown and quite solid. But if we zoom in, we find that it is made up of a collection of atoms bound together in molecules or, if we are thinking about a solid like salt, in a crystal structure. These atoms act as if they are balls connected by springs and so they wobble as would any structure of masses connected by springs. This is true whether the crystal is diamond or the molecule is caffeine, kahweol, cocaine or semtex (do you see where the customs part is going to come in yet?). Different crystal structures have different atomic arrangements meaning that they are effectively connected by springs of differing strength. If you build a mental model of masses connected with springs, you can see that changing the spring strength will change the vibration energy of the structure. So if now we think about the photons hitting such a structure, while most will bounce off as we saw with the droplet hitting the V60 wall, some photons will trigger a wobble in the crystal structure and bounce off with lower energy. It is a process analogous to the droplet hitting and bouncing off the collection of bubbles on the coffee surface.

Sun-dog, Sun dog
Sun dogs are caused by a different interaction between light and crystals. Rather than the inelastic scattering of Raman spectroscopy, Sun dogs are caused by the refraction of light by hexagonal platelets of ice crystals.

When a photon of light loses energy, it is equivalent to saying that the frequency of the light has changed (which is very closely related to what Albert Einstein got his Nobel prize for in 1921). So a photon that creates a crystal vibration and is scattered off with lower energy has a lower frequency (or longer wavelength) than it had when it first hit the crystal. Importantly, the energy lost by the photon is identical to the energy gained by the vibrating crystal and so by measuring the frequency change of the scattered light we have a way of determining the energy of the crystal (or molecule) vibration. As this energy depends on the way that the atoms are arranged in the crystal or molecule, measuring the frequency shift offers us a way of identifying the chemical under the laser light: kahweol or cocaine.

It is not an easy technique as you can guess from the V60 analogy. Only around one in a million photons incident on a solid will be Raman scattered. You need some pretty decent optics to detect it. Nonetheless, it is a powerful technique because no two chemical structures are the same and so it can be used to identify tiny amounts of smuggled material completely non-destructively. It becomes easier to understand how this elegant technique has become useful for many areas of our lives from customs, through to pharmaceutical development and even into understanding how fuel cells work.

Although it is stretching the analogy too far to say that you can see Raman scattering by watching the droplets on your V60, it is certainly fair to say that watching them allows you the space to think about what is happening on a more microscopic level as your bag is hand-scanned at customs. What do you see when you look closely at your brewing coffee?

 

Categories
Coffee cup science Observations

A shocking coffee connection

There have been some fantastic thunderstorms in London lately. Perhaps nothing to rival thunderstorms in the tropics but for this region of the world they were quite impressive. One lightning storm in particular came very close. Thank goodness for lightning conductors! Perhaps the connection between lightning storms and coffee is not obvious. But maybe this is because you mop up your coffee spillages too quickly.

Reynolds, rain, waves, pond, raining
There are so many coffee-physics connections with rain and weather. It’s worth looking out for more.

The link is in the mess and the maths. It turns out that the maths describing water evaporating out of a drying coffee droplet is the same, in one crucial detail, as the maths describing the electric fields around a lightning conductor. If we want to see why this may be, we need to get a little bit messy and spill some coffee.

The question is how do coffee rings form? We know that to start with the solids in the coffee are distributed fairly evenly throughout the drink. It is the same when you spill it, initially a spilled drop of coffee looks like, well, coffee. But if you wait as this spilled coffee dries, you will find that a ring starts to form around the edge of the drop. How? How does a uniform coffee distribution when the drop is first spilled become a ring of coffee solids around the edge of the dried drop?

coffee ring, ink jet printing, organic electronics
Why does it form a ring?

A number of different aspects of physics feed into this problem but the one that is relevant to the lightning conductors concerns how the water in the drop evaporates. If you think about how a water molecule escapes (evaporates from) the droplet, it is not going to go shooting off like a rocket blasted out from the drop. Instead it will take a step out the drop then encounter a molecule in the air and get deflected to a slightly different path and again, and again, and so on. It follows the same sort of “random walk” that we know that the bits of dust on a coffee surface follow (and the same sort of random walk that provides a link between coffee and the movements of the financial stock exchange but that is a whole other topic).

Now think about the shape of that spilled coffee drop. If a water molecule were to evaporate from the top of the dome of the drop, it has a certain probability of escaping but it also, because its path is random, has a certain probability of re-entering the droplet. A water molecule at the edge of the droplet however will have a lower probability of re-entering the droplet purely on the basis that there isn’t so much of the droplet around it. Over many molecules and many ‘escape attempts’, this lower probability of re-absorption will translate to a higher flux of water molecules evaporating from the droplet at the edges. The water will evaporate ‘more quickly’ from the edge of the droplet than from the top of it.

artemisdraws, evaporating droplet
As the water molecules leave the droplet, they are more likely to escape if they are at the edge than if they are at the top. Image © @artemisworks

When this is written mathematically, the rate of evaporating water is related to the contact angle between the drop and the surface. The shallower the angle, the higher the rate of evaporation or equivalently, the greater the ‘flux’. It is this mathematical expression that is the same as for the lightning conductor if, rather than refer to an evaporating water flux we refer to an electric field. So the more pointy the conductor, the greater the field concentration around it. A shocking example of the idea that everything is connected.

Of course, there is much more to the coffee ring than this with physics that relates coffee rings to bacterial colonies, burning cigarette papers and soap boats. If you are interested, you can read more about how coffee rings form (including why a higher evaporation rate helps lead to a coffee ring effect) here. If on the other hand you want some well justified thinking time, go spill some coffee and watch as the coffee dries.

Categories
General Observations slow Sustainability/environmental

Time out

Perhaps an unusual post but there is so much opportunity to stop, think and notice at the moment. Whether it is relaxing in a café with a cold brew or sipping a take-away in a park. There is time to slow down and ponder. Here are three points that have been puzzling recently. What do you think? Perhaps you have other things that you ponder while sitting in a café? Let me know either in the comments section below, on twitter or on Facebook.

oat milk, kone, filtering
Oat milk filtering through the Kone filter – but what does oat milk tell us about Brownian motion, molecular ‘reality’ and the nature of a scientific theory?

Molecules, the atmosphere and oat milk.

On pouring home-made oat milk into a cup of black tea, it is noticeable that a large part of the oat milk is dense and falls to the bottom of the cup (before being stirred by the turbulence in the tea). A similar phenomenon is found in the rarefaction of gases through the height of the atmosphere and in the distribution of dye in water paint. This latter effect was used to establish the existence of molecules back in 1910. The idea that Brownian motion was caused by molecules had been problematic because there was no way to see molecules in a liquid producing the Brownian motion. The theory linking the two was only developed properly in the early twentieth century. What makes a scientific theory? Is it legitimate to postulate something that cannot currently be observed experimentally?

Packing value

Why does roasted coffee often come in plastic packaging that is unrecyclable and not very reusable? What could prompt a move to a more circular economy. Would it be possible to recycle plastic bottles into coffee ‘boxes’ with an air valve at the bottle top (see pictures). This would increase the recyclability without seeming to affect the taste of the coffee?

bottle, coffee bottle, coffee box, coffee packaging
An idea for a circular economy suitable coffee packaging? Recycled plastic bottles as airtight coffee containers.

Related to that, what are your coffee values? Do you favour taste and aroma, traceability, sustainability? Does the packaging that your coffee arrives in feature? Which of these is more important to you? Does the way you drink coffee reflect this?

Footfall past a café

How many people are walking past the café you are sitting in each minute? How many does that translate to per day (accounting for differences in day/night footfall)? Assuming the paving stones remain the same, how long would it be until the successive footprints of all these people caused erosion of the pavement surface? What are the implications of this for the geological features near you?

Whatever you think about in a café or while drinking a coffee, enjoy your time taken out to think. Perhaps you will notice something (or realise something) very interesting or noteworthy and if you have any thoughts on any of the above do let me know either in the comments, on Twitter or on Facebook.

 

Categories
General

New findings in arabica…

coffee and Caffeine at Sharps
Things are not always as they seem. Speciality coffee helped scientists to develop a method for detecting fraud in coffee sold as 100% arabica. But how?

…or why adding chloroform to coffee can be a good idea.

Perhaps you remember a story from a few weeks ago that up to one in ten bags of “100% arabica ground coffee” on sale contained “substantial” amounts of robusta coffee?

The story suggested that, perhaps unsurprisingly, fraud is quite common in the coffee industry with cheaper robusta being substituted for the more coveted arabica in a substantial number of packs of pre-ground coffee. But how did the authors of the paper measure this and why did speciality coffee play an important role in the study?

The study used ¹H NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy to measure the concentration of a particular “finger print” chemical known as 16-O-methylcafestol or 16OMC for short. This aspect of the study was not new. The compound 16OMC was known to be found in robusta (Coffea canephora) while it had not been previously found in arabica (Coffea arabica) beans. It had therefore been considered an excellent marker chemical as to whether a sample of arabica beans had been contaminated with a cheaper robusta.

Previous studies had also used NMR to check for 16OMC but in those studies, they had used a conventional NMR machine and the data collection and analysis had taken a long time. It was also expensive, which meant that it had shortcomings as a technique for quickly investigating fraud within the industry.

The difference in this new report was that firstly, the scientific team investigating the coffees used an NMR machine that fits on a lab table-top: portable, commercially available, and so a possible tool to quickly detect fraud. But secondly, the authors ‘double brewed’ the coffee using chloroform. They first dissolved the ground coffee in chloroform which was filtered using filter paper and then dried and re-dissolved in fresh chloroform to produce a super-concentrated coffee-chloroform brew. This super-concentrated chloroform coffee enabled the authors to obtain a much better signal to noise ratio on the data and so improve the reliability of the detection of any rogue robusta.

neon sign, light emission
NMR uses the light emitted/absorbed from energy levels in atomic nuclei. An analogous effect causes light to be emitted/absorbed by energy levels in electrons. An effect you will have seen on many a high street in these neon signs.

But why could this group use a portable NMR machine whereas previous studies required far more expensive and bulky pieces of kit? NMR works because, just like electrons, atomic nuclei (protons, neutrons) have a property called spin. This spin gives rise to a magnetic moment which means that when you apply an external magnetic field to the sample, some nuclear magnetic moments are parallel, some perpendicular and some antiparallel to the applied field. Consequently, the different moments have different energies which, being on the atomic scale, are quantised meaning that they form discrete levels. This difference in discrete energy levels means that the nuclei will emit/absorb energy (i.e. light) at specific frequencies, which we can calculate. Moreover, the frequency is directly proportional to the applied magnetic field (because the larger the field, the bigger the energy difference between the levels): increase the field applied and you increase the resonance frequency of the nuclei.

But there is one more detail. The nuclei do not exist in isolation, they are affected by the chemical environment that they are in. So a proton in 16OMC will respond slightly differently to an applied magnetic field than a proton in say, water. Rather than be at the resonance frequency we have calculated, the frequency will shift as a consequence of the chemical environment surrounding the proton. As you may expect, this shift is small, but it is significant. It is partly because of this effect that NMR is such a fantastic tool for chemical analysis¹. Typically, the shift is of the order of parts-per-million from the non-shifted resonance frequency. So, in the coffee study discussed here, the interesting “fingerprint” peak is at 3.16ppm. Given that the machine was operating at 60MHz, this means that the scientists were looking at shifts of 189.6 Hz to the non-shifted resonance signal.

It seems sensible that the bigger the shift, the easier it would be to resolve these chemical fingerprints. To get the larger shift requires using a higher operating frequency which is exactly what more traditional NMR spectrometers used. However, given what we know about nuclear energy levels (above), a large energy level split (i.e. high operating frequency) requires a large magnetic field, and large magnetic fields require expensive and bulky pieces of kit. To put this all in perspective, the magnetic field of the Earth at its surface is (variable but around) 0.00005T. A fridge magnet has a field about 0.01T. Commercially available, small rare earth magnets can have fields about 0.3T. A 60 MHz NMR spectrometer looking at ¹H nuclei would need 1.5 T, higher frequency NMR spectroscopy would require still higher fields. The sort of magnetic fields that would be needed for the more traditional NMR technique therefore require large superconducting magnets which are bulky and require expensive cooling. Being able to use a lower frequency for such sensitive measurements is a significant engineering, as well as scientific, achievement.

Look carefully next time you add milk to your coffee. The ‘milk rings’ that can form offer an historical connection to understanding energy transitions in atoms as you can read about here.

So where does the speciality coffee come in? Well, it turns out that by measuring speciality coffee the team uncovered a surprising result: 16OMC was present in arabica beans too.

In order to calibrate the technique, the study had obtained traceable coffees known to be purely arabica or purely robusta. Some of these coffees were sourced from Ethiopia and were grown far away from any possible robusta hybridisation. They were speciality coffee. When the team measured these samples with their concentrated coffee extraction technique, they found that these too contained a small peak at 3.16ppm. Previous studies had missed this because it is such a small quantity. So, as well as determining a technique to quickly establish whether a given coffee on sale is fraudulently being marketed as 100% arabica, this new technique enabled the scientific community to learn something new about arabica. The coffee is more chemically rich than was realised.

If you would like to read more about the study, the authors have summarised it here as well as publishing the paper as open access (so you can download it for free) here. A summary of the results by the company that made the spectrometer can be found here. You can learn more about NMR spectroscopy online, or by obtaining a book from the library such as:

¹ Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Robin K Harris, Longman, (1983,1986)

Categories
Coffee review Observations Science history slow Tea

Pushing it at Lever and Bloom, Bloomsbury

Lever Bloom coffee
Lever and Bloom under a blue sky.

Does a take-away need to be rushed? A coffee so quick that there is ‘not enough time to prepare a flat white’? Are we always so preoccupied with the distractions of our day that we consume our coffee merely for the pleasant caffeine kick that it provides?

Lever and Bloom in Bloomsbury is a great example of why this does not have to be, indeed should not be the case. Since 2015, Lever and Bloom have been operating out of a cart on Byng Place close to UCL and a number of other research institutes. The character of the surroundings really does affect the space and both times I have been to Lever and Bloom I have either met interesting people in the queue or overheard snippets of intriguing conversation about history I know nothing about.

Coffee Bloomsbury reusable coffee cup
Long black in a keep-cup and telephone box in Byng Place.

It is easy to spot the coffee cart in the corner. Firstly, it is bright red and quite eye catching but secondly because of the queue forming in front of it. Don’t be put off though, the queue moves very quickly so you won’t wait long even if you are in a rush. Queueing however does give you an opportunity to peer into the cart. Space is used extremely efficiently. with each piece of equipment  apparently having its own perfect home. It reminded me of a childhood game of trying to fit in as many objects as possible into a matchbox. A cabinet on the table in front of the cart displays cakes including cinnamon rolls (sadly sold out by the time I arrived in the afternoon). It was also nice to see the number of people ahead of me in the queue who were using re-usable cups.

The lever of the name refers to the (Izzo Pompei) lever espresso machine that is used on the cart. It was fascinating to watch the ground beans being carefully tamped and the lever being pulled to prepare the espresso. Although there is some debate as to the optimum water pressure needed for preparing an espresso, the standard pressure is 9 Bar; water is pushed through the tamped grinds at nine times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. Watching these espressos being prepared reminded me of preparing ceramic samples of an interesting magnetic material a few years ago. We were interested in the electrical properties of a class of materials called manganites. To prepare the materials for measurement we first had to grind the pre-cursor powders (but with a pestle and mortar, no burr grinders) and then, after a couple of further preparatory steps, press them into a pellet ready for firing in the oven. The machine used for pressing the pellets had a lever, not dissimilar to that on the espresso machines and yet, the pressure that we used for the pellets was roughly 1000 Bar. This high pressure was needed so that dense pellets of manganite material would be formed when we heated it in the oven (typically at 1200 ºC). Just as a good espresso depends on the pressure and then the temperature and time of extraction, so the properties of the pellet would be affected by the pressure and then temperature and time of firing in the oven.

Portland Stone fossils
Fossils in Portland Stone. It is astonishing what is revealed when you slow down and notice the buildings around you.

Similar effects affect the rocks of the earth, something that is particularly visible in the area around Lever and Bloom. A geological walking tour around Byng Place, Tottenham Court Road and towards the British Museum illustrates this particularly well. Behind Lever and Bloom, the church of Christ the King is built from Bath Stone. An oolitic limestone, this type of rock is formed of compressed sand and bits of shell. Much as the manganite samples of my study before they were fired in the oven but of a more interesting colour. Heading towards Gower St and the impressive UCL building is made of Portland Stone. Another limestone, this building material is a goldmine for urban fossil explorers. Continuing the walk, on Tottenham Court Road, the Mortimer Arms pub is fronted by quartzite while Swedish Green Marble adorns 90 Tottenham Court Road. Quartzite and Marble are both types of metamorphic rock, formed by pressing together different precursor materials at high pressure and temperature. Other types of marble can be seen on the tour, suggesting the influence of pressure and temperature of formation on the rock structure as well as the type of precursor rock.

It would seem that such a walking tour is perfectly timed for a longer style of coffee, perhaps a latte (in a re-usable cup of course) from such a centrally located place as Lever and Bloom. And of course, assuming you are using a re-usable, there is even more to ponder. The pressure and temperature during the manufacture of the re-usable cup would have affected the properties of the cup (or in my case, glass).

Let me know if you spot any interesting rocks or fossils during your time at Lever and Bloom but whatever you do, I hope that you can enjoy your coffee and then slow down to enjoy it a bit more.

Lever and Bloom is at Byng Place, WC1E 7JJ

Categories
Coffee review Observations Science history

Hidden appearances at HoM

hot chocolate, soya, marsh mallow, HoM
Hot chocolate with marshmallows at HOM, Kings Cross.

In these long dark afternoons in the northern hemisphere, what could be better than a warming mug of lovely coffee in a bright environment? And so it was that we ended up at House of Morocco (HoM) on the Caledonian Road. Alerted by Brian’s Coffee Spot that Pattern Coffee had changed hands and become HoM we headed up to Kings Cross one damp afternoon in December to see how things had changed. Entering HoM is a strange mix of déjà-vu mixed with new. The pattern on the wall next to the window remains, as does the layout of the place. However it is also clear that much has changed since HoM took over.

There are murals and variously coloured cushions dotted around the café. Even in the darkness of the afternoon, the café was bright, but also crowded. We ordered a soya hot chocolate, a long black and a cheesecake and found a seat perched at a small table for two near the door (the only seat left at the time). The coffee, roasted by Terrone Coffee, was nicely balanced for the afternoon. But it seems that the hot chocolate and cheesecake combination were a real hit. The cheesecake was apparently very good (definitely worth a return visit apparently) while the hot chocolate went very quickly!

Inside the café, the windows were steaming up with the warmth of the inside. We over-heard that this was because of the coffee machine rather than any extra heating that had been installed. Does this suggest an alternative energy source? Coffee machine heaters to go with treadmill electricity generators in gyms?

all about pigmentation at HOM
Menu with sugar bowl and glazed tile at HOM, Kings Cross.

Meanwhile, the decoration was demanding my attention. A vividly coloured glazed tile supported a jar of sugar which was propping up a black and white menu. The menu had an illustration reminiscent of henna tattoos while above all of this balanced a peacock feather in a vase. Underneath the peacock feather was a poster advertising the “Phantom of the Opera”. The whole ensemble was suggestive of appearances and how they can be deceptive. The phantom of course wore a mask to disguise his disfigured face. But the peacock? The peacock is hiding something too.

Many of the colours that we see around us such as those making our coffee brown and making the tiles colourful are as a result of energy from the light being absorbed by the atoms in the substance (the coffee or the tile). This type of light absorption (and emission) can be connected with vortices in coffee as was discussed here. However the blues and greens in a peacock feather are different. If you look at the feather under a high powered microscope, you will find that the feathers are not dyed as such, in fact the natural colour of the feathers is quite dull. Made from keratin (as you can find in your fingernails) and melanin (responsible for the brown pigmentation of your skin, eyes and hair), the feathers do not seem blue at all. In fact it is the structure in the feather that is producing the colour rather than any dye that produces the colouration.

It turns out that there is a long history concerning our understanding of the colours of a peacock’s feather. It started with Robert Hooke who, in 1665 described the feathers of both peacocks and ducks and noticed that the colours he saw under an optical microscope were ‘destroyed’ by putting a drop of water on the feather. A little bit later and Isaac Newton was suggesting that the colouration was due to the thickness of the transparent bits of the feather. There’s a link here to coffee. Newton was suggesting that an effect similar to thin film interference (which causes the rainbow colours on the bubbles in a coffee) was causing the colours of the peacock feather.

appearances at HoM
Peacock feather and phantom poster with the top of a mirror. How does structure affect what is seen?

As our understanding developed through the centuries (and the microscopes became more powerful), it became apparent that while thin film interference (and multiple film interference) could cause some animals to appear as if they had certain colours, the peacock, along with some other animals, was a little bit more special. Rather than just being the result of reflection off an interface, the peacock’s feathers showed structure at the nanoscale (1/1000000 of a mm). The keratin and melanin in the feathers were arranged in a square lattice to form what is known as a ‘photonic’ crystal. The way this structure reacted with incoming light meant that only certain wavelengths were reflected from it. Depending on the size of the layering in the feathers, they appeared as blue, green or yellow.

Although a lot more is now understood about the factors, structural and chemical, that lead to colouration in all sorts of creature, be they butterflies or beetles, peacocks or pigeons, there is still more to discover, more to understand. The authors of the paper referenced here wrote

“In this paper, we describe a wide variety of structural colors occurring in nature and attempt to clarify their underlying physics, although many of them are not fully clarified.”

There’s clearly a lot more work to do before we can properly explain these “beautiful microstructures”.  And plenty of time to do so as we sit enjoying well made coffee and hot chocolate in a bright and warming café.

HOM can be found at 82 Caledonian Road, N1 9DN

 

Categories
Coffee review Observations slow

Constructive interference at Frequency, Kings Cross

exterior of Frequency Kings Cross
Note the tiles. Frequency, Kings Cross on a rainy day.

It was a rainy afternoon when we ventured to Kings Cross and into Frequency. Suggested by the London’s Best Coffee App as the closest café to our then location, we made our way through puddles and rain onto Kings Cross Road. At that point, a brain-freeze meant that we couldn’t see where Frequency should be. The map on the app was implying that we were extremely close but there didn’t seem to be a café around. Then we saw it in front of us! The striking black and white tiling on the floor somehow hiding this shop-front from view.

The tables inside matched the tiling outside. Black and white triangles meeting at a point. My long black (from Workshop) was placed close to the intersection of these triangles. The coffee arrived in a mug, more cylindrical than standard coffee cups and so closer to mathematical models of coffee cups that are used in explanations of convection and rotation in the cups. An interesting change of aesthetic that also changes the internal dynamics of the coffee. A nice touch was that the mugs were also coordinated with the tiling, though to be fair I hadn’t noticed that at the time.

The coffee itself was extremely fruity, a lovely warming brew to enjoy while watching the rain outside. The interior of the café meanwhile was decorated with a lot of wood around together with a couple of music stands. Perhaps the music stands make sense in a café named Frequency. Indeed, according to the review on London’s Best Coffee (or as it is now known, Best Coffee), there are plans to build a music recording studio here as well as having live musical performances. However, also mentioned in that review was the fact that this café had been designed and built from scratch with the help only of online tutorials. Which makes a particularly resonant connection with something I noticed here.

mug of coffee at Frequency
Coffee at Frequency.

What caught my eye as I contemplated this café was the one bit of bright colour on the ceiling. It was also something that hints at problems that can crop up when you design and build your own electrical circuits: Parallel wires (in this case leading to the lightbulbs). Perhaps in the café, these were intended to represent music staves, certainly that would fit in the theme. However to an experimental physicist who dabbles in designing pieces of kit for electrical measurements, these parallel lines leading to a light mean something entirely different.

They mean noise.

When you are designing a piece of electrical equipment to be used for measuring voltages across an unknown material, there often ends up being a lot of wiring in the probe as well as the bit at the end of the instrument that you are actually interested in. Some of this has a practical purpose. Often we want to measure something when it is very cold so it has to be on the end of a metal rod that is inserted into a vat of liquid nitrogen or helium or that is held in a strong magnetic field. When designing the probe, the bits of wire leading to the interesting bit at the end of the rod can be almost as important to consider as the measuring bit itself.

To see why, perhaps you remember putting compasses around a wire carrying an electric current? As the electric current is switched on, the compass needles move indicating that the electrical current generates a magnetic field. The basis of electric motors and dynamos, the idea is that an electrical current will generate a magnetic field and a moving magnetic field would generate an electrical current.

transmission lines, electrical noise
The wires to the light bulbs in Frequency Kings Cross. Memories of transmission line lab experiments.

Now, imagine two parallel wires each carrying an electrical current. Both of them will produce a magnetic field, but if there is a varying current in one or other of the wires, the magnetic field will also be varying. And if there’s a varying magnetic field, it can induce a current in the neighbouring wire. In this way, electrical noise on one of the wires can be transmitted to the other.

Such electrical noise can be inconvenient if we are trying to speak on the phone and just hear a ‘hiss’, or if we are trying to listen to the radio and just can’t tune in. It could also be more problematic, imagine if there was a lot of electric noise on a machine measuring the electrical activity of your heart, an ECG. Consequently, there are whole books written on how to reduce electrical noise pick up. However one simple way to reduce a lot of the noise is to get rid of those parallel lines the like of which are on the ceiling at Frequency by twisting them together. The ‘twisted pair’ is a great way of making more sensitive electrical measurements. And if you wanted to reduce the noise further, you can shield the twisted pair with another conductor and ground (or earth) it.

The twisted pair works by reducing the magnetic coupling between the two wires. Of course, it may not be quite as immediately aesthetically pleasing as parallel wires on a ceiling but there is something quite elegant about a well made and shielded twisted pair properly grounded in an electrical circuit. And when you put everything together, ground it properly and see the noise from the electrical mains (at 50Hz) disappear, there is a certain pleasing effect from that too.

Café design as a clue to electrical design. Frequency can be found at 121 Kings Cross Road, WC1X

 

Categories
Coffee Roasters General Home experiments Observations slow Sustainability/environmental

How compostable is compostable?

the cup before the worm bin
“Completely compostable”
But how compostable is it?

So we’re trying to do our bit for the environment and ensure that we always get a compostable cup for our take-away coffee. But have you ever stopped to wonder, just how compostable is compostable?

It is a sad fact that most items that are described as ‘compostable’ do not compost as you or I may expect. Throw a ‘compostable’ cup in a compost bin (or wormery) and you may be surprised at how long it takes to disappear. The reason is that the legal definition of compostable generally refers to industrial composting conditions. In contrast to the worm bin, or the home-compost heap, an industrial composting facility is kept at (58±2)ºC. In these conditions, something defined as ‘compostable’ by the EU regulation EN 13432 or the US based ASTM D6400 needs to have completely disappeared within 6 months but have 90% disintegrated to fragments smaller than 2mm by 12 weeks.

Perhaps it is not hard to see why the legal criteria are defined this way. How would you define common criteria for home composting? Although there is a (Belgian led) certification called “OK compost” by Vinçotte, there are as yet no widely agreed definitions for home composting. However, some companies do try to seek out truly home-compostable packaging. In the case of coffee specifically, one coffee roaster trying to keep their environmental impact to a minimum is the Nottingham based Roasting House. Although most of their packaging is paper, (recycled and recyclable), they needed something less permeable for transporting pre-ground coffee by post. Apparently this took quite a search as many bags that said they were home-compostable turned out not to be. Eventually however they chose Natureflex, a packaging that provided a good moisture and air barrier to protect the coffee but that also broke down in a home composting environment.

But how quickly would it disappear in a worm-composter? On the 6th May 2017 my coffee from Roasting House arrived double packed. First in a Natureflex compostable bag and then in the standard (recyclable) paper bag/envelope. It was ready to be placed in the worm bin on the 8th of May 2017.

See the video below for how long it took to be eaten by the worms:

Seventeen weeks later, on 4th September, it was time to declare the bag composted. After 17 weeks, the bag had started to become indistinguishable from other items in the worm bin (such as garlic skin) and when I picked up what bits seemed to remain, they quickly disintegrated in my hand. It seemed time to declare it over for the bag. A truly home-compostable bag, but how does it compare to the ‘OK Compost’ label of Vinçotte.

Coffee bag genuinely home compostable
How it started.
The Roasting House bag before it went into the worm composter.

The definition used by Vinçotte is not for a worm-composting bin but a standard home-compost heap. Ignoring this fact for the time being, the certification requires that a compostable item disintegrates to pieces less than 2mm within 26 weeks and has fully gone within 365 days when held (in a compost bin) between 20-30ºC. Within these criteria, the packaging from Roasting House is certainly “home compostable” as determined by the worms. Although there were bits of greater than 2mm after 17 weeks, just handling them reduced their size to bits in the mm range. And that was only after 17 weeks, well within the 26 specified by the criteria used by Vinçotte.

So now we’re just waiting for the coffee cup. That went into the worm bin on the 20th April 2017 and is still going, 21 weeks later. Will it be home-compostable? Will the lining that’s needed to keep the coffee from leaking out prevent the worms from breaking it down? You’ll find out here! Make sure you sign up to the BeanThinking newsletter or follow @thinking_bean on Twitter or Facebook to be one of the first to find out when the coffee cup has finally gone.

In the meanwhile, if you’re looking for an environmental solution to your take-away coffee cup habit, it is worth investing in a re-usable cup. Most councils at the moment do not provide industrial composting facilities. Moreover, it is not safe to assume that compostable items will eventually compost in a landfill as modern landfills are water-tight and air-tight. As they say here, the modern land fill is not designed to mulch as much as to mummify. So,if you want to avoid green-washing, you may want to invest in a re-usable cup, for a review of these see Brian’s coffee spot here.

 

 

Categories
Coffee review Observations slow Sustainability/environmental

A need for religion at Continental Stores, Russell Square

exterior of Continental Stores
Ghosts of shops past! Continental Stores on Tavistock Place

Many years ago Tavistock Place, now home to Continental Stores, was on my cycle route home. I can no longer remember whether the sign “Continental Stores” was visible then or whether it had a second sign over it. However, the faded red backdrop, the vintage font and the whole feel of the frontage does make “Continental Stores” (the café) stand out a bit from the crowd. Continental Stores is run by the same people who run Store St Espresso on Store St. but much of the original decoration of the café has been kept from the old shop that previously occupied this space. And although this ‘new’ branch is now more than three years old, for various reasons I’ve never quite got to visit until a couple of weeks ago.

We arrived fairly late, just half an hour before closing, and managed to get a long black before the espresso machine (which was apparently having a bad day) finally packed up. Although filter coffee was available, this is not the case when you arrive so close to closing. The coffee was however very drinkable and the window seat provided a great place to watch people pass by. Bubbles formed around the edge of the coffee, reflecting the light streaming through the window in this airy café. White mists skitted over the surface of the drink. There was plenty to consider in the café too, from the oil paintings on the wall to the subtle green colour of the glass separating the interior of the café from the bar area (for more on glass colours click here). A large amount of science in a cosy place. However today’s train of thought took a somewhat different direction. That day, sitting in the café, prompted a thought train to develop in a more introspective direction: what does climate change denial have to do with personal integrity and the need for a continuing dialogue between science and religion? And what does that have to do with coffee drinkers?

Incredibly, it started with a map.

glass and map interior Continental Stores
So much to contemplate! From glass to the map.

On the wall in the main area of the café, behind the counter, is a map depicting the world. Although there is a photo on this page, there is a far better one in Brian’s Coffee Spot review of Continental Stores which can be found here (scroll through the gallery to find it). Also on the map are two circular depictions of the Polar regions. That fact, that the poles are illustrated separately and that the map is a rectangular impression of our spherical home impressed on me the knowledge that it is extremely difficult to truly represent our globe on a flat piece of paper. All maps are projections and the one at Continental Stores is the familiar cylindrical projection where you imagine a cylinder of paper wrapped around the equator of the Earth and then project the profile of the countries around onto it.

A few years ago a Malaysian-Chinese lady, now in her 70s told me a story about growing up in Malaysia (then Malaya) under British colonial rule. At school it was always impressed upon her how much larger Britain was than Malaysia, you could see it just from looking at the maps (which were always of the cylindrical projection as displayed at Continental Stores). It was only later that she realised the importance of map projections. Although Malaysia, at the equator, was fairly well represented by the cylindrical representation, Britain, being relatively closer to the poles, was stretched and so appeared much larger. Britain is in fact larger than the Western Malaysia peninsular but not to the extent that it appeared from the map. Had the map projection been used as a subtle political tool justifying Britain’s rule over Malaya*?

Similar thoughts occurred to me recently with some of the comments that have followed hurricane Harvey in the US (and the floods in south Asia that have killed more than 1200 people but have sadly been far less reported here in the UK). Was the intensity of the hurricane, and the fact that we are experiencing similarly intense storms more frequently, a consequence of climate change?

message inside Continental Stores
From the table to our planet. A message with resonances.

Although that’s an interesting question, it’s not the one that I would like to consider today. Instead, it’s the response on social media generated by data about the frequency of the hurricanes and their strength. “Why are you only showing weather information for the past X years, if you look back further/look more recently…” etc. It is the same with graphs showing global temperatures as a function of time. People ask “Why are they plotted that way, if we looked back further/zoomed in a bit more….” It seems that there is an accusation behind many of the questions; there is doubt about the integrity of the scientist who circulated the graph. What is at the root of this?

When writing a scientific paper (even on a relatively uncontroversial topic like magnetism), there is frequently a lot of discussion about exactly how to present the data. The graphs need to be clear enough and on a scale that the ‘message’ of the paper is delivered quickly. But equally in a way that does not misrepresent the data. Then, different authors have different ideas on aesthetics. The final graph is a balance between these. So why is there such distrust of similar graphs presented on subjects such as climate change? Are we so used to being sold messages in adverts that we immediately suspect the scientists of an evil motive, trying to persuade us to ‘buy’ an ideology?

Clearly there are occasions on which data is presented in a manner to impress rather than to reveal, as was the case with the map. Though even with the map, there is some ambiguity. Some cylindrical projections can be helpful for navigators as lines of latitude and longitude cross perpendicularly. There are times when such a representation would be useful. So when we generate, share or read such  graphs, we need to ask ourselves questions about our reaction to them. Are we representing the data truthfully? Are we trying to make the data fit into opinions that we already hold? These questions apply equally whether we are creating the graph or if we are seeing it on social media and reacting to it.

black coffee Continental Stores
Bringing it back to the coffee. The bubbles reflect the light from the windows. Taking time to contemplate the drink gives us space to reflect.

These considerations generate questions of their own. What do we think science is? Do we believe in the existence of truth? What is truth anyway? What are my motives in sharing/reading this piece of information; am I trying to understand the world or manipulate it to my advantage?

Which is just one reason (of many) that a respectful dialogue between science and the humanities, between scientists and theologians is desperately needed. Religions and philosophies have been asking questions about the nature of being, questions of truth and motive for millennia. Tools such as the examination of conscience have been developed by religious traditions to allow us to interrogate our own motives and to start to understand our own behaviour. In a week when it was revealed that more than 50% of people in the UK describe themselves as having ‘no religion’ it seems to me that, whether we believe in a religion or not, many of us would benefit from such an examination of conscience before we hit ‘retweet’, ‘like’ or ‘share’. Questioning our motives before creating, sharing or commenting. But such tools require space and the time taken to slow down, perhaps in a café, to deliberate on our own attitudes. Time that is needed to help us to see if it is our behaviour that needs amending before we question the integrity of others.

Such deliberations often don’t have conclusions but instead open up more questions. The fortunate consequence of which is that it becomes imperative that we spend more time contemplating our coffee in quiet, welcoming and thought provoking environments such as that found at Continental Stores.

Continental Stores can be found at 54 Tavistock Place, WC1H 9RG.

*I have kept the name of the country Malaysia as it is now known apart from when referring to the time when Britain had colonised it and called it “Malaya”.

 

Categories
General Sustainability/environmental Tea

Would you like plastic in that?

Straws with viscous liquid (milkshake) in them
Do you need that straw?

Plastic Free July starts in just a few days time. Each year this initiative encourages us to eliminate, or at least reduce, our use of single use plastic throughout the month of July. It is a great way to increase our awareness of our plastic use by attempting not to use any.

There are numerous reasons that we may want to reduce our plastic consumption. In addition to the problems of litter associated with plastic waste, there are problems for wildlife caused by ingesting our rubbish. Even if we dispose of it responsibly, plastic takes a long time to degrade. It is thought provoking to consider that the take-away cup that we discarded yesterday may still be lying in some landfill site years after we have forgotten about drinking that coffee. So what can be done about it and what are the specific issues for coffee drinkers?

air valve, plastic, environmental coffee packaging
Air valves and metallised plastic are common packaging materials for freshly roasted coffee, but can we avoid them?

One way to start to reduce our dependence on single use plastic is to understand how much we actually use on a day by day basis. Registering for a plastic free July is one way of doing this. As a result of attempting a Plastic Free July last year, I have found some plastic-free habits that have stuck with me all year. Loose leaf tea is one such improvement (teabags can also contain plastic). Although initially it seemed a bit of a pain to use a basket to brew the tea, as I kept with the habit I found it easy to compost the tea leaves after making a brew and the tea tastes better too. Things like shampoo bars and tooth ‘paste’ tablets (from Lush) have also been better and longer lasting than similar products packaged in plastic bottles.  Although some plastic habits are hard to break, living as plastic free as possible for one month did deepen my awareness of the plastic that I take for granted.

But perhaps living plastic free for a month is too daunting? An alternative challenge sadly emphasises just how linked coffee drinking can be to single-use plastic consumption. The Top 4 challenge asks you to eliminate, just for July, the target take-away items. Of these 4, at least 2 (and arguably 3) are linked to coffee drinking or cafés. The top 4 are plastic bags, bottles, take-away coffee cups and straws. Could you avoid these for just one month? Take the challenge.

blue tits, mint water, mint infusion, mint leaves in water
Enjoying a glass of water in a cafe can be better than running with a bottle of water anyway.

If you are ready to go plastic-free in your coffee habits, here’s a list of where we frequently encounter single-use plastic while drinking in cafés or even at home, together with suggestions of how to avoid the plastic where appropriate. Please let me know in the comments section below if you can think of further examples (and how you are avoiding them either in July or more permanently).

  • Disposable take-away coffee cups – get and use a re-usable one. You can find a helpful comparison of different types of re-usable coffee cups on Brian’s Coffee Spot.
  • Tea bags – yes they can contain plastic, see more information here. To avoid them, get hold of a metal tea basket, or even a tea pot and strainer and start investigating loose leaf tea.
  • Water bottles/soft drinks bottles – if in a café, why not enjoy the moment by staying with a glass of water rather than grabbing a bottle? If you are in a hurry though, a flask (such as klean-kanteen) is a great investment. In some parts of London (and perhaps elsewhere?) chilled tap water is available on tap for use in re-usable bottles
  • Air valves on your roasted coffee bag – do you really need these? The Nottingham based coffee roaster, Roasting House, did a taste test on freshly roasted coffee packaged with and without air valves, you can read their results here. If the coffee roaster that you normally purchase coffee from insists on using air-valves, why not write to them to request that they reconsider their packaging or try a more environmentally conscious roasting company to see how their coffee compares?
  • Coffee packaging – What type of material did the last bag of coffee that you purchased come in? Chances are it was metallised plastic, why not find a roaster with alternative packaging? Who knows, you may find another great coffee roaster to add to the ones that you buy from.
  • Straws – why would you use these anyway?
  • Milk bottles – Some companies still supply milk in glass bottles, otherwise you could consider non-dairy milks that can be home-made such as oat or almond. Some cafés also offer home-made non-dairy milks which would be a way of going plastic free while enjoying a latte in a café.
  • Cakes/sandwiches packaging – in larger chains these may come in packaging. However, if they are coming in packaging then they are not likely to be that fresh, find somewhere else with better cakes or sandwiches or make your own!
  • Spoons/cutlery
  • Packaging for sugar etc – ditching the sugar is supposed to be good for you anyway. If you cannot resist sweetening your coffee, try to find a sugar that is packaged in paper rather than plastic.
  • Washing up liquid – switching to a re-fillable washing up liquid reduces (but does not eliminate entirely) plastic waste.

Good luck if you take the challenge. There are still a few days left to plan how you can reduce the plastic in your life before the start of Plastic Free July 2017. Please do let me know how your attempts to be plastic free go and whether you find, as I did last year, that you enjoy your tea (or even coffee) more when you do so.