Sugar facts are inherently "fun facts".
Oct. 21st, 2006 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blimixHow's this for weird: Each teaspoon of sugar you add to your coffee raises the drink's level by less than the teaspoon before it did.
When I worked in fast food, we had to lift bins containing heavy (~60lb) bags of soft drink syrup onto racks. The diet soda syrups were appreciably lighter than the regular ones (and I did appreciate it!), due to the high density of the dissolved sugar. That got me thinking: What *is* the density of dissolved sugar? It was likely greater than that of solid sugar, because you can add lots of sugar to water without changing the volume too much. (And that's after accounting for the very significant effect of air lost from granulated sugar.) I was very curious to know how adding sugar would affect the density of the solution, and I figured that, once I knew (or calculated) the density of the dissolved sugar, I could calculate the density of any solution thereof (at standard temperature and pressure). (My experiment with the supersaturated sugar solution last year sadly involved no measurements.)
It turns out that there's no easy answer. The volume of a set mass of water or sugar in the solution (the partial molar volume) changes depending on the concentration! There isn't even a formula; people just use a chart called the Brix scale to look up the density of a sugar solution of a given concentration and temperature. (Look at the bottom of this page for a sample at 20°C.)
Working from the sample chart, when you start with pure water, dissolving a gram of sugar will raise the volume by 0.84 ml. By the time you're up to 90% sugar, adding a gram of sugar will only increase the volume by 0.59 ml. Only a few tablespoons after that, my coffee will be ready to drink.
Yes, I like sugar. Why do you ask?
(Before some smartass points it out: No, I don't take my coffee at 20°C.)
When I worked in fast food, we had to lift bins containing heavy (~60lb) bags of soft drink syrup onto racks. The diet soda syrups were appreciably lighter than the regular ones (and I did appreciate it!), due to the high density of the dissolved sugar. That got me thinking: What *is* the density of dissolved sugar? It was likely greater than that of solid sugar, because you can add lots of sugar to water without changing the volume too much. (And that's after accounting for the very significant effect of air lost from granulated sugar.) I was very curious to know how adding sugar would affect the density of the solution, and I figured that, once I knew (or calculated) the density of the dissolved sugar, I could calculate the density of any solution thereof (at standard temperature and pressure). (My experiment with the supersaturated sugar solution last year sadly involved no measurements.)
It turns out that there's no easy answer. The volume of a set mass of water or sugar in the solution (the partial molar volume) changes depending on the concentration! There isn't even a formula; people just use a chart called the Brix scale to look up the density of a sugar solution of a given concentration and temperature. (Look at the bottom of this page for a sample at 20°C.)
Working from the sample chart, when you start with pure water, dissolving a gram of sugar will raise the volume by 0.84 ml. By the time you're up to 90% sugar, adding a gram of sugar will only increase the volume by 0.59 ml. Only a few tablespoons after that, my coffee will be ready to drink.
Yes, I like sugar. Why do you ask?
(Before some smartass points it out: No, I don't take my coffee at 20°C.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 12:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 02:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 03:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 11:15 pm (UTC)Don't knock that which gets you converts. ;-P
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 01:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 01:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-23 03:05 pm (UTC)I'm currently sitting in the room with someone who thinks it's wrong to put dairy and sugar in coffee, someone who thinks it's wrong to put sugar in coffee , and my heathen self who embraces lots of sugar and lots of fat in order to make coffee drinkable.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 04:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 02:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 02:31 pm (UTC)(definition, heathen: A person who does not worship [coffee])
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 04:21 am (UTC)The second paragraph of the "introduction" page has a typo in the celsius to Fahrenheit conversion. Kinda bad form of them.
By looking at the brix scale it seems that there probably is a fairly straight forward formula, they just don't list it (starting at 10% brix, the density difference from pure water is .003998 per percent brix. The density difference increases approximately by .0002 per percent increase in brix.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 10:35 pm (UTC)This pattern also reveals a typo in the chart. The density at Brix 30 should be 1.12898, not 1.11898. This makes it continue to fit perfectly. (I might have accepted it as a fluctuation due to reasons beyond my ken, but for that fluctuation to have the same three least significant digits as the predicted value is too improbable to swallow.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-22 11:18 pm (UTC)