Tea Blog

Tea – it’s not just for drinking anymore. There are actually a number of things you can do with tea besides drinking it. For starters, you can cook with tea, you can use it to dye clothing and the rumor is that you can even use tea bags to remove unsightly bags and wrinkles from under your eyes.

But wait – there’s more. There are manufacturers who suggest that you can use their tea-based products to stop snoring or get a tan. Or you could even name an entire town after tea. Yes, there is really a town named Tea, in South Dakota.

Or you could use tea as the basis for various types of offbeat scientific experiments, demonstrations and whatnot. Pouring tea in a plane – upside down – might not really tell us anything about science, unless of course we examine the reasons behind why such a thing is possible.

What can tea tell us about gravity and fluid mechanics? Well, perhaps nothing more than we can find out by experimenting with other liquids. Nonetheless, here is a video clip of an American astronaut using chopsticks to take a sip of tea – more or less – in the weightless environment of space. For more on the effects of weightlessness on tea and other liquids refer to this article from NASA’s Web site.

Speaking of space, how about a tea bag rocket? If you’ve never heard of this novelty device, here’s a good Web page to get you familiarized with it. There are a surprising number of videos on YouTube that demonstrate this odd phenomenon. Here’s a link to one of the most popular. By the way – don’t try this at home, kids. Or if you must, be really, really careful.

What’s the connection between Albert Einstein and tea leaves? Glad you asked. Here’s a quick Wikipedia overview that explains, as Einstein first noted, why “tea leaves in a cup of tea migrate to the center and bottom of the cup after being stirred rather than being forced to the edges of the cup.”