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Engineering the Perfect Coffee Mug
Nerval's Lobster writes "From the annals of Really Important Science comes word that a research assistant who picked up his B.S. just seven months ago has invented a coffee mug designed to keep java at just the right piping-hot temperature for hours. Logan Maxwell, who got his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from North Carolina State University in May, created the "Temperfect" mug as part of his senior design project for the College of Engineering. Most insulated mugs have two walls separated by a soft vacuum that insulates the temperature of a liquid inside from the temperature of the air outside. Maxwell's design has a third layer of insulation in a third wall wrapped around the inner basin of the mug. Inside is a chemical insulator that is solid at room temperature but melts into a liquid at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The insulator – which Maxwell won't identify but swears is non-toxic – turns to liquid as it absorbs the extra heat of coffee poured into the mug at temperatures higher than 140 F, cooling it to a drinkable temperature quickly. As the heat of the coffee escapes, the insulating material releases heat through the inner wall of the mug to keep it hot as long as possible; a graph mapping the performance of a prototype shows it could keep a cup of coffee at between 128 F and 145 F for as long as 90 minutes. "Phase-change" coffee-mug insulation was patented during the 1960s, but has never been marketed because they are difficult and expensive to manufacture compared to simpler forms of insulation. While working on the Temperfect design, Maxwell met Belgian-born industrial designer Dean Verhoeven, president of consulting form Ancona Research, Inc., who had been working on a similar design and had already worked out how to manufacture a three-walled insulated mug cost effectively. The two co-founded a company called Joevo to manufacture the mugs." According to the Joevo Kickstarter page, you can get one starting at $40. For that much, I'd like a clever lid like this Contigo has.
This is just the same approach as Coffee Joulies, which is a former Kickstarter project. I have a bunch of these, they work well. No need for a custom mug.
It holds 800ml.
If you need insulation, you are drinking it too slow.
perhaps the ability to add an iv-drip
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A $40 coffee mug. Come here and let me slap you.
It'll never sell to me. There are sunk costs involved. I have too much engineering invested in non-linear coffee consumption as cheap mugs and paper cups lose heat. Slowly at first, with much intake of the aroma. Then cautious sips, then normal sips, then fairly heavy consumption somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3rd of the way down. It ain't broke. I'm not fixing it. It works anywhere. No need to buy an expensive mug, take it with me everywhere, wash it, and worry about losing it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The unnamed insulator is Spam. Not sure if that makes it toxic or non-toxic, though.
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Seriously though, this is just an improvement on the thermos. A fancy improvement, and it might even be more effective ... but it's not breaking new ground.
Nothing that hits the shelves as a consumer product is ever 'breaking new ground'. Its always standing on the shoulders of what came before; and has already cut its teeth in niche markets that needed and could afford the high early adopter price for research and development for the incremental improvement over what was already out there.
All good, except; gallium is hella expensive. And very very dense, therefore very heavy.
My money is on good old-fashioned paraffin wax, which (at least in the bulk candle variety that I bought in my hippie candle-making days) melts at exactly 140F.
Cheap and food-grade (it coats many candy items) and pretty light.
Any quantity over one is plural, including 1.5 hours. For that matter, while fractions between zero and one are generally written in the singular form (1/2 hour), the equivalent decimal forms are typically plural (0.5 hours). Zero is always plural. Really, the only quantity guaranteed to use the singular form is exactly one.
That said, you're correct that the quantity-free "hours" would generally imply at least two hours, regardless of the fact that 90 minutes converted to hours would be written with a plural. That's because it doesn't include potential fractions of an hour, only whole numbers.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
As others have pointed you - you missed the point.
It cools to 140, and then holds near 140 for as long as possible, because 140 is the optimal coffee temperature -- or so sayeth the coffee gods.
That said, I spent a lot of time explaining to people with the "new aluminum beer bottles" that "gets cold faster!" also means "gets warm faster" for all the same reasons.
What a piker.
Just line your coffee mug with plutonium. That'll keep it warm.