Lid or no lid-- scientifically explored

At work, I like having a warm cup of tea because my office is cold. Well, also because I really like tea. Well, my tea is typically cold before I even get half way through with my tea. I blame it on a cold office (though I can imagine a dear friend of mine arguing that it is because I am just a slow tea drinker).
I had been trying to find ways of keeping my tea warm, given the materials I had available. Today, I decided I was going to do this scientifically-- meaning, isolating variables and testing it out! I wanted to compare whether a tall cup with a smaller opening and no lid was the same, better, or worse at keeping my tea warm than a shorter wider but lidded cup.

I used approximately the same amount of green tea (+/- 5 milliliters) at approximately the same temperature (+/- one degree celsius) in each.

I started off with both cups open to the air (unlidded). The initial temperature was 70 degrees C. After about two hours, the wider cup dropped to 27 C and the skinnier cup to 29 C-- after error analysis, it is apparent that there is not statistical significance to the temperature difference.

In the second phase of the experiment, I started off the two cups at about 79 C and placed the lid on the wider cup. The lid was made of the same ceramic material as the rest of that cup. Though both cups were made of ceramic, it is unclear of they are the same kind of ceramic material, molecularly speaking. But for now, I am going to assume that they were similar enough because they felt like they were the same. Well, after approximately two hours, the lidded cup dropped to 32 C and the unlidded skinny cup dropped to 31 C. Clearly no statistical significance.

So, according to this preliminary study, it seems that lids don't do much.

Okay, so I have to admit, these were not tightly controlled experiments but for the purposes of the experiment (and also for this blog) they were good enough. As it turns out, a possibility why the two resulted in such similar patterns may be because the openings of both cups were really not that far off from each other (one was 3 1/8 inch and the other was 3 3/8 inch). Future work can be directed toward exploring the question: At what point will the width begin to make a difference? The rationale for this question is that surface area, in particular the top surface area, makes a lot of difference in how quicking something cools. Here, it seems that a difference of 1/4 inch doesn't seem to matter much.

More sober now

A comment on this blog from a friend of mine has reminded me that it was not an overwhelming majority. Even though Obama won by 7 million votes, that really isn't that many votes on a national scale. That means Obama won slightly more than 5% of the votes cast. The population of the New-York-City-metroplex is larger than that amount. That's about 5.8 Dallas' or 11.9 Denver's.

Now that I am a bit more sober and now that the angry reactions are starting to pop up, I see that there is still a big divide to bridge. For example, at Lehigh University a student was called "an ignorant black bitch" when she talked about the Obama victory with a friend (there were other incidents at Lehigh to0). I am surprised by this. My initial reaction is, "Gosh, don't you know better than to embarass yourself in this way?" I know that this is motivated out of fear, fear of change and difference (because difference might imply change too). And we certainly do live in very uncertain times. I hope we can find a way to help people with these fears.

As I said, we do have a lot of work ahead of us.

I am blown away

I just listened to President Obama give his victory speech. I am so happy that I am in tears. I cannot believe that I am alive, a part of this, that my nation overwhelming voted for Obama, that any of this just happened. Hope for a better future has just taken root in my heart. Pride in my fellow Americans for not only voting him in but more importantly sooo many participated and cared about the direction of our nation. Joy that I am happy to call America MY nation. It is my nation. Even my brother, who is a staunch Republican in my family, voted for Obama. Eventhough he didn't agree with Obama's tax policies, he trusted him more and he had hope that Obama could help improve things in America. Yes, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we, as a nation, have decided that we all have a vested interest in participating in it and making things better.

I am also blown away by the fact that we have elected an African-American into the White House. This is inspiring. So many little boys and girls across America can really begin to believe that it is possible to move past the fetters of racial oppression, that this possibility is not in theory but in reality.

I am blown away by the hope that is in my heart.