This content was created by Kim Gaskill. This content was uploaded by Kim Gaskill. This is a YouTube video titled "DS125 Opinions Black Coffee" (Daily Spark) published April 30, 2019. It is a short monologue by Kim Gaskill in which she talks about how different cups and mugs (ceramic, travel, paper) affect how quickly coffee cools, surface-area effects, and a scientific explanation (Stefan–Boltzmann law) for why black coffee cools faster than coffee with creamer. She offers a lighthearted suggestion to test this and frames the piece as a daily spark/brief opinion segment.
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It's a new day. I'm Kim Gaskill, and this is the Daily Spark. Do you drink your coffee out of a mug, a ceramic mug, a regular coffee cup, or do you drink it out of a travel mug or a plastic or paper cup that you get at a drive-through or takeout? It makes a difference. I'm sitting here drinking my coffee this morning, and because I'm not traveling, I'm not going to Starbucks, I'm not drinking my coffee out of Starbucks cups, which are normally a paper-based cup. I've been drinking my coffee out of a regular coffee cup, a ceramic coffee cup, and it gets cold like almost instantly. I'm constantly having to reheat it, which I don't really like when coffee is reheated, especially in a microwave. Microwave. And I use a small pot here, so I only have a couple of cups before I make another fresh pot, so it's not too bad. And I drink coffee pretty quickly, but if I set it down and I come back 5 minutes later, it's already cold. Now, those of you that know me, you know I don't put anything in my coffee. I drink my coffee black, and I like a darker espresso bean usually, and So today I did a little search on Google about heat loss. You know, I'm kind of a science geek, so I looked up heat loss from different size mugs because I wanted to know. Of course, we all kind of know that surface area, if it's a bigger surface area on your mug, if it's a wider, broader mug, you're going to lose heat faster because there's a bigger surface area, so the heat's going to evaporate off of there. But there's a lot of other things about it that I realized when I started looking things up, and I just wanted to share them with you because everybody has an opinion. Is coffee better if you drink it out of a mug, or is coffee better if you drink it out of a cup or a paper Styrofoam or insulated mug? So what I found out today is there's actually a scientific reason why black coffee cools down faster than coffee with creamer in it, which I never understood. I'm like, it should stay hotter longer, but there's a Stefan-Boltzmann law that says black things lose heat faster. They cool down faster. Even though black absorbs heat faster, it also loses heat faster. So if you put cold creamer in your coffee cup, the lighter color coffee actually cools down at a slower rate than black coffee with nothing in it. Yeah. Now Initially, when you put cold creamer in coffee, yes, the temperature is going to drop some. But then if you compare the two cups of coffee, a black cup of coffee will be colder than the creamer-added coffee, like, 5 minutes later. Crazy, right? When you look up science, it's kind of cool. So if you go to the coffee shop today and you put creamer in your coffee Make a bet with somebody that drinks black coffee that their coffee is going to be colder than yours in 5 minutes, because you'll probably win that bet. Be an interesting conversation to have because everybody has an opinion, but if you use science, you always win. Hope that sparks a little conversation for you today. Join me again tomorrow for another daily spark.
