For Science

It's become something of a meme, the tagline, "For Science!" I believe you can credit the former "Mythbusters"; Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage; for making science popular. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, was just a name and Mythbusters made the scientific method center stage in crazy and enlightening ways. 

It's wonderful, really. I was blessed to have science teachers in high school who felt we were better people by applying scientific analysis to life. And I feel growing up during the active space race, made science extend into all areas of life. "What happens if..." was the way we lived. We never yelled, "For Science!" when we tossed something crazy into the burn barrel, but we loved the pretty colors when we burned the Sunday comics. We now know the resulting colors were not so good but it was cool. Kids who chose chemistry or biology were just as revered as kids who were athletic. It seems like a different time and place. 

I find myself curious about the world around me and during the frigid temperatures of two weeks ago, decided to conduct an experiment. I wanted to see if I could make Dr Pepper slush. Now, let's set aside the slush mugs you can buy on the Internet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Turns any beverage into slush. I wanted to see, with the below zero temperatures at night, if I could freeze Dr Pepper cold enough that it slushed, not frozen completely. 

There are also several YouTube instruction videos for making soda in a plastic bottle instant slush. I've tried the instructions, several times, and have failed every time. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but if I really want slush, I'm going to have to get a mug. Here is the record of my experiment. 

First of all, all I had was Dr Pepper in cans. If you have ever, ever, frozen soda in cans or attempted to freeze soda in cans, you know this is not the proper container for that experiment. I believe I have cleaned up only 3 explosions in the freezer. I know better and always set a timer. I wasn't sure I would achieve slushiness so I emptied the soda into this plastic cup. 

There is more than enough room for the soda to expand. If you don't know, liquid will expand when frozen and in a closed can, it will explode the can because the energy of expansion exceeds the walls of containment. (Science, you see. ) 

Ample room in this cup for expansion. I thought about a glass glass, but I had grave concerns about temperature differentials. If I am able to partially freeze the Dr Pepper and then bring the glass into the house, will the sudden warmth of the kitchen, even putting this in the well of the sink, crack the glass? I looked in the cupboard. I have a few glasses I'm not that attached to, but cleaning up a broken glass was not something I wanted to do. Therefore, I decided to go with a plastic cup which would be able to withstand the temperature differential better. That cup is decorated with my World of Warcraft guild's emblem. It's a great cup.

I realized, as I poured this out, that the Dr Pepper was going to lose its fizz, if left uncovered. That's the whole reason it's vacuum sealed. I covered it immediately with plastic wrap, sealed as tight at possible around the edges.

Ideally, I wanted to sit the cup on the deck railing but I can't get the back door open. It was, at that point, frozen to the threshold. I had a rug shoved up against the bottom and that had frozen to the bottom of the door. On the outside, you could see the ice. The back door needs to be removed from its hinges, the whole frame readjusted and the door rehung. It's definitely a spring project. So, I looked at the front door.

There was a layer of ice at the bottom of the door. The threshold here is not flush with the bottom of the door. It hasn't been for years. I need a new threshold. Cold air could seep in under the storm door and the whole interior of that door was covered in frost.

I probably should have put the cup on the milk box outside but I thought I'd see if I could get the soda to freeze just between the doors. The threshold of the house door is very good and there is little cold air coming under the door when it is closed. It was cold here, but was it cold enough?

I set the timer for an hour. It took 3 hours between the door before I got any kind of freezing. Between hours 2 and 3, it started to freeze and I got this when I pulled it in. It wasn't slush. It was ice and was freezing. The top 2 inches was large ice crystals of Dr Pepper. Below that was very cold soda. 

Unfortunately, it was flat. I think that was partially due to my checking on the process every hour and removing the plastic. I also think that's part of the nature of freezing soda. The "carbonation" doesn't last. When you consume slushed soda, you're not interested in the carbonation. The flavor and the texture make up for that lack.

But when you're doing an experiment like this and I remembered the times I got nearly frozen Dr Pepper by forgetting a can in the freezer, it seemed like the carbonation was gone or nearly gone from that, too. I'm thinking you can't freeze fizz. If you, like me, like the fizz, freezing soda isn't going to give you that tickle. The Dr Pepper actually tasted rather foul and I wound up pitching it. That is, perhaps, an experiment for another day. Would it be foul tasting if I partially froze it in the can or bottle?

I'd also like to find out how long it would take to freeze a can or bottle at negative temperatures. I know it's kind of akin to just sticking it in the freezer part of the fridge, but I'm curious simply about air temperature. And yes, there are probably reams of information somewhere in the vastness of the Internet which would answer these questions, but I like to conduct the experiments myself.

The weather has turned mild now, for January, which I do not mind in the least. So, answers to these and any other experiments involving cold and soda will have to wait. Plus, I'm not buying any more soda until maybe the first weekend in February when that one sportsball event takes place and every junk food and soda on the planet is on sale.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Going Unplugged

It's been a very unique few days in the office. We're going through one of the many spurts of busyness that often hits us. We wait on calls to confirm appointments. The client needs things NOW. If I do this and Tara does that and Gene can do this, that means Mike can go here and we'll send Pam over there. But if we get a call about 'x', well, all bets are off on getting things done.

When I first started, this thing called "e-mail", wasn't the preferred method of communication. Phone calls and faxes and the post office got plans, specs, requirements and notes back and forth. We got company email in summer of 2001, the first office in the company to be connected via this Internet thing to the main office. My then boss dismissed this as little more than smoke and mirrors and it would never replace the fax machine as a work horse of communication.

And you're giggling or guffawing, right now, because I can hear you. We still do some things via fax, but most communication is first via phone and then via email. Appointments are scheduled through email. Contracts have been sent via email for preliminary approval. Requests for proposals are always sent via email. I do a small trade newsletter and all the information I publish in the newsletter has been gleaned from online sites who send me information via email.

The office email died some time on Thursday. We could not access it on our desktops. Mike could get it on his iphone but I don't have my smart phone synch'd to receive email. (I'm thinking that might be something I should do now.) He was the only person, from Thursday afternoon through 2 p.m. today, to see any kind of office correspondence. Good luck looking at plans on an iphone. He would forward things on to his primary personal account so he could look at them at home at bigger than 4 inches.

The degree of angst this produced was amazing. You'd think we'd been bombed back into the stone age, resorting to communication via smoke signals. Clients were reasonably understanding that we were working on the problem but lags in communication caused some to be less than charitable with our later than they wanted replies. "It's absolutely crucial to business to have a working email," I heard on several occasions. "This is horrible, beyond horrible, that our email is not working."

I suppose, in this day and age, that is a true statement. As I have dealt with needing to make appointments and exchanging information, I have some observations. Having email means less planning goes into preparedness. The almost instantaneous nature of email means that you don't have to build into your need for information, the delay by sending something via post. There is a huge amount of assuming that because you need something now, the receiver is just sitting around waiting for your contact. "I'm sending you 35 pages of documents. I need your proposal by the end of the week." Um...see above for how busy we are. In the past, you'd never hear that. The documents would come 2 weeks before the proposal was needed. I really, really wish that, sometimes, I could say, "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Email excuses the planner whose desk is a nightmare from being organized.

The second observation is that we have become so dependent upon technology that when the office email goes down, when the power goes out, when our Internet fails, we do not have skills to do our work. There is a whole generation who does not know how to write letters by hand, how to make a typewriter work to print a label, how to pick up the phone and talk to a client because everything is done by technology. They cannot do their job without the LCD in front of them.

The last observation is that having all your email come to your phone means you are never without it. Think about the last time you drove some place and did NOT see someone driving while talking on their phone. What is so important that you have to yak it up while you are driving?

Going without company email has caused me to decide to do something I've thought about for a couple of years now. We always think we are a better driver than that guy in the next lane and this greatly comes into play when we are talking on our phone while driving. There are reasons laws exist to prohibit texting while driving and talking on cell phones while in school and construction zones. Ironically, in my Facebook Mythbusters feed, there was a test of the "myth" that you are a worse driver while talking on the phone than you are when you're drunk. You should watch this.

I have decided I will no longer talk or text while driving. It is so tempting to pick up the phone because you're driving down a straight highway at 65 mph. You'll be fine. Or to think, because you're going "only" 30 miles per hour, that you can handle the phone call and the stop and go traffic. I realize that my reflexes aren't what they used to be or maybe never were and if I have to listen to what you are telling me and pay attention to traffic, I simply can't do both. And, studies are increasingly showing that we humans aren't set up to multitask, period, let alone when we are at the wheels of a car.

So, I took the pledge. Sheila Simon, Illinois' current lieutenant governor signed this and I'm encouraging you to do so as well. If I'm in my car and you call my cell phone, you're going to get my voice mail. Leave me a message. I'll call you as soon as I can safely pull over or when I get to my destination. Whatever you have to tell me, even if it is a genuine emergency, I will listen to but when I listen to it, you will have my undivided attention.

Thanks to 2.5 days without email, I'm also thinking of having technology-free days, but that's a work in progress. Here's to reclamation of a small portion of my life and to being more fully aware of what's going on around me.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb