2011-12-03
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The objective of Utanalog by Unfold is to return the iconographic Utah Teapot model to its roots as a piece of functional dishware while showing its status as an icon of the digital world.
Shame it’s so expensive (€299) but it’s a lovely idea.
2011-06-17
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2011-01-10
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tea, etc. (by Prof. Michael Stoll) (via mondoagogo’s faves):
From the 1936 statistical book “The Home Market”. Symbols and Illustrations by Gerd Arntz.
2011-01-04
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Christopher Hitchens: How to make a decent cup of tea, following George Orwell’s golden rules in Slate.
The saddest thing about this paragraph for me is that, with the spread of Starbucks, Costa, Caffe Nero and their ilk, the same sentiment applies in London as much as it does here. At least there are still greasy spoons, if you look.
2009-10-01
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Tea Making Tips from the Empire Tea Bureau, from the BFI’s national archive. So many great moments.
2009-05-17
Teapotting
- blech: thinks there needs to be a new term for drinking cups of tea back to back. "Chaindrinking" doesn't have the right ring to it.
- antimega: @blech teapotting
2009-04-08
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BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Kite surfer sparks 10-crew rescue
“Advice”, eh? Like “stop bloody kite surfing”?
See also: Kite surfer is found unconscious; Kite surfer airlifted to hospital; Danger claim against kite surfers; Safety rethink after kite surf crash; Surfer hurt in freak kite crash.
2009-01-11
The Science Of Tea Cosies
A friend on Twitter (who has protected their updates, and thus gets to be anonymous) asked this morning:
Do tea cosies actually work? My physics brain say ‘not much’, but my British brain says ‘WHY WOULD YOU QUESTION THE WAY THINGS ARE?’
My response on Twitter was straightforward:
Why not do science? Get an oven thermometer, stick it down the spout, and let hot water cool a few times with + without tea cosy.
Of course, this is fine as far as it goes, but when asked “how fast do things fall”, physicists almost never go back to first principles, but instead use established theory. More to the point, I don’t have the right sort of thermometer.
So, one assumption, up front. As you’ve probably gathered from my reply, my definition of “work” is the perhaps narrow “does a tea cosy keep the tea warmer for longer”; there’s no consideration of how the tea actually tastes.
Now, there are two relevant mechanisms for heat transfer here: conduction and radiation. When you pour boiling water into a cold teapot, the water cools because some of the energy is conducted to the pot. This is why most instructions for tea say you need to “warm the pot”; it reduces the magnitude of this initial loss. (Since the initial brewing temperature is more responsible for the way the tea tastes than any subsequent cooling, this is probably more important if you want your tea to taste nice, rather than just stay warm.)
Once the pot is warm (technically, ‘approaching equilibrium with the water’, I suppose), radiation takes over: the pot loses heat to the air by radiating it away. This is where tea cosies come in, and they have two effects. Firstly, they replace radiation from the pot with conduction from pot to wool (or nylon, or whatever), and typically fabrics are not as good at warming up as porcelain is, meaning more heat stays in the pot.
Secondly, what heat does reach the cosy isn’t radiated as readily. This means that the wool won’t cool down, drawing more heat from the pot. (In contrast, the radiated heat from an uncovered pot means that the water inside has to lose yet more energy warming the porcelain up again).
In summary, then, even without experimental evidence, I’m convinced that a tea cosy will indeed keep tea in a pot warmer than tea in an uncovered pot.
