Science - the uncannily successful process of constructing a working model of the Universe. It takes comparatively little food and money to sustain a working scientist, however these alone will not guarantee success - which brings us to the unsung heroic liquids of scientific progress:
Liquid nitrogen and coffee.
Most scientists never consider the extent to which modern science relies on the above duo. Enter any modern laboratory, no matter what field, and in the far corner you will spot the familiar silvery cylinder, inconspicuously puffing out vapor. Liquid nitrogen cools telescope cameras, freezes cells and samples, keeps your superconductor superconductive and helps in countless other ways. Coffee containers are also easy to spot, being stored on every floor of an institute, often even in hallways for easy access. This is crucial, as a scientist past the 4-hour half-life of consumed caffeine in the body will be utterly incapable of systematic work, even as crucial as handling liquid nitrogen dewars.
As a side note, the illustration[1] at left clearly shows that caffeine-drugged spiders, as opposed to their "clean" friends, are quite horrible at making neatly organized webs. One is left to wonder why it works the other way with scientists...oh, wait... perhaps it doesn...
But let's not go there. I'm sure depriving the world's scientists of coffee with the excuse of finding out if a completely harmonious new global scientific paradigm will emerge would lead to disaster anyhow: simply delay the pizzas for an institute lunch by ten minutes to see why.
A few fundamentals:
- Storage: dewars for liquid nitrogen; jugs for coffee
- Optimal temperature: 77 kelvin for nitrogen going into equipment; 330 kelvin for coffee going into a scientist (theoreticians often accept 300 kelvin coffee and record-holding theoreticians can even survive coffee at room temperature)
- Swirls of steam emanating from the liquid are a healthy sign for both substances
- Prices: starting at €10 per liter of liquid nitrogen or kilogram of decent coffee, cheaper in bulk
References:
[1] Image from Wikipedia entry on caffeine. (c) NASA
5 comments:
Most interesting :-) I don't know much about this liquid nitrogen, but in terms of coffee, I would like to ask why do you suppose that theoreticians often accept cooler coffee? Are there any "deeper" reasons?
I've noticed, that it even might depend on whether a person is 'matinal(e)' or not (it means that whether one likes to go to the bed early and wake up as early as possible or rather vice versa). For example I've completely changed my rythm (to waking up as early as possible) and I should say, that now I rather dislike coffee and tend to drink (green) tea.
One could even speculate on the sort of metaphysical and/or thought "connections" with East or West. Coffee is originally from Africa and nowadays from Brazil (rather "a Western or Middle-East connection"), tea on the other hand has always been produced and drunken (is that grammatically right?) in China, India, Japan, Korea etc. (that is, so to say "a Far-East connection").
Of course my little thought-exercise doesn't want to suggest anything - it means nothing... :-)))
Hi tiitik, thank you for the clever observations. In my opinion, disentangling coffee and other preferences in the life of a scientist is very difficult simply because the social pressure to drink coffee is huge at most institutes, driving many people to doing it. Coffee is available for free and I haven't heard of any "orange juice breaks" ;) On the other hand, I could well be confusing cause and effect. Any opinions?
Coffee is usually associated with energy, which is probably useful when studying something, whereas tea might be thought of as mellow and not as energizing. Might it be that we have 'coffee breaks' due to the idea we have about the effects of coffee, besides the social pressure (and habituation)?
Do you suppose there are studies on this phenomenon?
The boosting of certain cognitive abilities, especially in sleep-deprived individuals, seems to be scientifically proven, and I agree that this effect leads us to drink more coffee. It would be interesting to know if the cognitive boosting disappears with caffeine tolerance, and the latter apparently develops in days or weeks of regular consumption. A Google Scholar search for "effects of caffeine" turns up a few interesting papers :)
A paper by Nehlig et al. from 1992 concludes that "the central nervous system does not seem to develop a great tolerance to the effects of caffeine although dependence and withdrawal symptoms are reported", which seems to answer my question and apparently justifies drinking coffee at work, leaving out other possible negative effects.
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