July 2009
19 posts
Why does food get stale over time? James BeMiller, emeritus professor of food science at Purdue University, answers:
When we think of food going stale, we typically think of products such as bread. You might think that bread starts to stale days after it is made. But the process of staling actually begins as soon as the loaf leaves the oven and begins to cool. How quickly bread goes stale ...
Is Hell Endothermic or Exothermic?
The Thermodynamics of Hell…
A thermodynamics professor had a quiz with one question: “Is hell exothermic or endothermic?”
One student wrote the following:
First, if souls exist, then they must have some mass.
Next we must determine at what rate souls are moving into hell and at what rate souls are leaving. We can safely assume that the forces that brought them to hell will...
Hydrogen - The Next Big Fuel?
Reining in manufacturing costs of fuel cell vehicles is the first major issue the automakers are addressing. While several have fuel cell prototype vehicles on the road—Toyota and Honda are even leasing them to the public in Japan and California—they are spending upwards of $1 million to produce each one due to the advanced technology involved and low production runs. Toyota hopes to reduce...
Legal Drugs
Dilemma: It’s a Friday night after a long week at work, and you just want to kick back, unwind, and get trashed. Problem is, your friends want to go to some posh bar downtown, and you have only a twenty on you. How in the world are you going to get drunk on twenty bucks at a bar that sells ten-dollar martinis?
Solution: Buy an energy drink at a liquor store and use it as a mixer.
Why...
What's in a Chocolate's Genome
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) team with more than ten million U.S. dollars from candymaker Mars Inc. will analyze the more than 400 million parts of the cocoa genome, a process that could help battle crippling crop diseases and even lead to better tasting chocolate.
Fungal diseases are estimated to cost cocoa farmers an estimated 700 million U.S. dollars annually.
The analysis will...
Morning Coffee
That morning coffee is just the thing to get the brain in gear and the body moving. But it turns out that just the aroma of coffee also gets some of our genes up and at ‘em. That’s according to research in the June 25th issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The authors report that a sniff of coffee turns on several genes in the brain in ways that help diminish the...
What is the best way to blow up a Chemistry Lab?
System Test
System Test