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What Coke Contains

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Re: What Coke Contains

#81

Post by rexreed »

glhaynes wrote: post #71
yareally wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the individual inventor, but this company[1] invented the twisty in 1939. Also twistys are color coated on bread, denoting the day of the week it was put out[2]. [1] http://www.twistems.com/pages/profile.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twist_tie#Color_coding_for_brea...

I love that Wednesday's twist tie color is a complete mystery even with the assembled resources of the internet.

As for why bread is not baked on Wednesdays (Read the comments):

http://main.kitchendaily.com/2011/04/07/color-coded-bread-ba...

"One thing is universal-all bread companies deliver five days a week, with days off being Wednesday and Sunday. Thus, these days have no color coded bread for the deliver driver to remove from the store."

Also, it's not universal the color codes (Which can vary from one brand to another), and in some cases, 7 color codes are used because those bread companies deliver 7 days a week: http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/breadtag.asp

Re: What Coke Contains

#82

Post by contingencies »

mynameishere wrote: post #74
contingencies wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good spot to learn precisely how and why you are wrong: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/

Natural grapes make wine on their own. In fact, most creatures produce ethanol through one or another pathway.

Presence of ethanol does not a wine make.

If you happen to have a certain temperature range, suitable wild-yeast strains present, adequate chemical composition and pick at the right time of year, it is theoretically possible to make a drinkable wine with unprocessed fruits and no chemicals. However, in most environments and with most fruits you are far more likely to wind up with something foul-tasting and undrinkable.

Re: What Coke Contains

#83

Post by contingencies »

jonknee wrote: post #69
mynameishere wrote: post #40

By contrast, you can make wine from a single ingredient. And it's an awful lot better than coke.

The glass bottle, cork, label, etc do not grow on the vine.

Nor do sterilized equipment, reliably dominant yeasts, clarification agents, additional sugars and yeast nutrients often required to balance or complete fermentation, or environments that maintain and/or remove suitable temperature ranges for desirable yeasts.

Re: What Coke Contains

#84

Post by dyno12345 »

venus wrote: post #63

> The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero While I understand what the author is trying to say, I don't think that is true at all. I'm pretty sure that if they had a good reason, any number of advanced economies could get it together enough to produce the cans themselves. Seems like the main hard part is the aluminium. While I'm nit-picking, I believe natural cryolite has not been use…

A more accurate way to say it might be that no individual nation could produce a can of coke so cheaply.

Re: What Coke Contains

#85

Post by lifeformed »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #76
chimpinee wrote: post #57

An enormous and sophisticated 'tool chain'. Surely it could never be implemented in a one-day-to-be-invented universal fabricator? One is reminded of those 19th C ppl who thought recorded music was impossible since any player would have to contain miniature versions of all the orchestral instruments (or things that resembled them: "humanity's choir") together with a horrendously large paper roll punched full of holes

If you have a large enough supply of electrons, protons and neutrons, and you can combine them at will, you can make anything.

Anything except for quarks.

Re: What Coke Contains

#86

Post by toast0 »

k33 wrote: post #13

eh, I just don't feel like the writer understands or cares to explain how that whole process is actually detrimental to the world despite the fact that it "unites" it. Coke is just addictive sugar water that does nothing for anyone. When has coke given you something other than diabetes? Kevin Ashton fails at pointing out the impact of this collaboration. Couldn't all of these talented people that made such a sophisti…

A can of coke (in the US) gives me 140 calories, every time I drink one. That's 140 calories I would have had to get from somewhere else, or do without. It would be better if I got those calories along with some fiber and other nice things by eating a fruit, but to say that Coke does nothing for anyone is absurd; sugar water clearly has utility.

Re: What Coke Contains

#87

Post by sopooneo »

arscan wrote: post #18
bitserf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty damn awesome. Behind everything we take for granted, there's someone who slaved over it and brought it into fruition. Thanks for sharing!

I think about this occasionally. Everything that you see that isn't "nature" was explicitly designed by somebody (and most likely a large team of somebodies). Its truly mind-boggling.

Sort of. So much is the result of tiny incremental design improvements over decades or centuries. I remember the first time I took apart a small engine it seemed to work so well together that it was almost organic. Like it had evolved, which in a way it had

Re: What Coke Contains

#88

Post by nivloc »

venus wrote: post #63

> The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero While I understand what the author is trying to say, I don't think that is true at all. I'm pretty sure that if they had a good reason, any number of advanced economies could get it together enough to produce the cans themselves. Seems like the main hard part is the aluminium. While I'm nit-picking, I believe natural cryolite has not been use…

It's the same reason natural cryolite isn't used - it's not economically viable. Lots of countries grow all the agricultural products. Aluminum isn't hard, just potentially more expensive.

> While I'm nit-picking...

Me too, Pinjarra is where the refinery for the largest producing bauxite mine is. And the refinery operates today because of cheap coal in Australia.

As is the case with many industrial minerals, it's often far cheaper to ship raw ore or concentrates to smelters built where electricity is cheap. Aluminum is no exception, and electricity cost is the reason there is a refinery in Iceland, despite being far from any bauxite mines.

The story really isn't that no country can't make a can of Coke, but why they don't. It's a fascinating story, unfortunately mostly told through feasibility spreadsheets.

I'm in the industry and it's not hard to think of all the steps ranging hundreds of millions of years to put an apple on my desk (there's volcanoes and inland seas! Dinosaurs if you stretch your mind!). This is a good summary. If he got any deeper, it'd be a book.

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