February 14, 2006

So, this afternoon I took the last bit of the office coffee from the office coffee pot, and bought a 20-ounce lime Diet Coke from the office Coke machine, and I mixed the cooling coffee with the Coke, thinking "Hey! A coffee-Cokie treat!"

It was OK.

But the interesting thing, the interesting thing, see, was that the mixture foamed up with a thick head. Normal Coke, subject as it is to massive testing by food scientists with a vast knowledge of food technology in their noggins, has a very precise foaming head action: just enough to look appealing, but it doesn't last long enough to stick to your lip if you drink it from a glass or shoot out the bottle if you open it right after it tumbles out of the machine. The coffee-Coke mixture threw all that careful science off, and the foam persisted.

Hours later, not really paying attention, I stuck my empty water cup into the empty coffee-Coke cup, in preparation for their disposal, and a great puff! of mysterious dry fluffy stuff shot up into the air and drifted slowly back down. I caught some on my finger, and it vanished into a smear of pale brown powder.

I had forgotten about the coffee-Coke foam, so it took me a minute to figure out where the airborne fluff had come from and what it was. The foam had dried into fine light lace, and when I stuck one cup into the other the resulting air pressure forced the stuff into the air.

All of which probably wouldn't have been nearly as interesting if I had not, in fact, made the coffee-Cokie treat in the first place. Wired me up pretty damn good, yeah sir you betcha!