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Newton's Cooling Curve and a Cup of Tea
This question relates to the optimal point in time to add milk to your tea, depending upon when you actually want to drink it. If you don't take milk in your tea, please leave the thread. If you are a coffee drinker, you may observe but kindly refrain from posting a bunch of coffee-related ephemera - create your own thread, please.
Sometimes you want to drink your tea as soon as humanly possible, sometimes you want it after you've completed some other activity ... it doesn't matter what these activities might be, by the way, I don't judge.
Anyhoo, my understanding of Newton's Cooling Curve, being an exponential function, means that I believe that a hotter body will lose heat more quickly than a cooler body, until the two bodies reach the ambient heat of their surroundings.
In the case of a cup of tea, this means that if I want the tea to remain hotter longer (as I am engaged in some other activity of unspecified nature and unable to drink it in the meantime), I need to add the milk as soon as it is safe to do so. This is because, pre-milk, the cup of tea will lose heat faster than it will post-milk (being an exponential function) whereas the addition of the milk will bring the temperature of the tea down in a linear fashion. However, if I want to drink the tea sooner rather than later, I should add the milk at the last possible instant prior to drinking it, to take advantage of the faster cooling of the pre-milk tea.
Obviously, this is a hugely simplified description of the problem, I am ignoring the effect of scalded lips and throat, the doorbell going before you are able to add the milk or the fact that my kettle tends to switch itself off before boiling the water if there is a litre or more of water in it.
So, on to my question - does Newton's Cooling Curve exist or did I dream it?
Follow-up question: why does my kettle malfunction when it is heating a litre or more of water?
This question relates to the optimal point in time to add milk to your tea, depending upon when you actually want to drink it. If you don't take milk in your tea, please leave the thread. If you are a coffee drinker, you may observe but kindly refrain from posting a bunch of coffee-related ephemera - create your own thread, please.
Sometimes you want to drink your tea as soon as humanly possible, sometimes you want it after you've completed some other activity ... it doesn't matter what these activities might be, by the way, I don't judge.
Anyhoo, my understanding of Newton's Cooling Curve, being an exponential function, means that I believe that a hotter body will lose heat more quickly than a cooler body, until the two bodies reach the ambient heat of their surroundings.
In the case of a cup of tea, this means that if I want the tea to remain hotter longer (as I am engaged in some other activity of unspecified nature and unable to drink it in the meantime), I need to add the milk as soon as it is safe to do so. This is because, pre-milk, the cup of tea will lose heat faster than it will post-milk (being an exponential function) whereas the addition of the milk will bring the temperature of the tea down in a linear fashion. However, if I want to drink the tea sooner rather than later, I should add the milk at the last possible instant prior to drinking it, to take advantage of the faster cooling of the pre-milk tea.
Obviously, this is a hugely simplified description of the problem, I am ignoring the effect of scalded lips and throat, the doorbell going before you are able to add the milk or the fact that my kettle tends to switch itself off before boiling the water if there is a litre or more of water in it.
So, on to my question - does Newton's Cooling Curve exist or did I dream it?
Follow-up question: why does my kettle malfunction when it is heating a litre or more of water?