As much as you love your morning coffee for getting you through your daily commute, we’re pretty sure you don’t feel as strongly about it as these guys.
The science lovers at the ‘Reactions’ YouTube channel have created a video explaining how your cup of caffeine isn’t just the hot liquid you believed it to be at all, but is actually a microcosm of the entire universe.
Quite a claim.
Making your science lessons on molecules, diffusion, reactions and evolution make so much more sense, they succinctly explain how coffee embodies all of these principles.
You see making that humble cup of coffee actually involves a lot of basic scientific principles, such as molecules, diffusion, reactions and even evolution itself.
They start at a molecular level, saying: “First off, there are trillions and trillions of molecules in the air around that coffee and those hot vapours rising off the cup carry more than a thousand different types of molecules.”
Once you’ve got your coffee, adding the milk takes it a stage further as the swirling cream is an example of diffusion, of particles moving from an area where there are lots of them to where there are less.
Being pulled down by gravity and displaying Brownian motion – the random movement of particles as they bounce – which helped Einstein prove atoms existed.
And even the caffeine isn’t just a chemical that humans enjoy, but a complex and compound molecule key to life on earth: “Plants didn’t evolve caffeine to help us get through 9am meetings, like so many of the molecules plants make, it is a chemical weapon that can disable or even kill insects that threaten the plants.
“And in citrus plants, due to its addictiveness, it helps bees and other pollinators remember the citrus flowers they visit.”
This return visit then gives those plants an evolutionary advantage because they are able to spread more genetic material.”
One thing is for sure, you’ll never look at that cup of coffee the same way again.