The Science of Créme Brûlée

Baking is closely related to chemistry. I like to think of it as the science you can eat. This post is going to be specifically about baked créme brûlée. Sort of recently it was Mother's Day and my mom requested that I make her créme brûlée. This dessert is basically a custard that is baked. Custards are a type of pudding that has about equal parts eggs and milk/cream.

If you would like to make some you will need ramekins, a  pan deep enough to put water halfway up the ramekins and a butane torch.

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup milk

1/4 vanilla bean (split)

3 egg yolks

1 whole egg

1/4 cup sugar

brown sugar

cut up fruit and berries

Eggs provide a structure and color to the custard, while milk/cream provide flavor and texture. Both provide fat, which is essential for many desserts. Sugar provides flavor and little else in the custard. At the end sugar comes back to provide a lovely texture and fun activity.

The recipe I used called for a quarter of a vanilla bean to be steeped for 10 minutes in the milk/cream mixture after it had been brought to a boil on the stove. Eggs combined with sugar. Remove the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the milk/cream. Add the milk/cream to the eggs slowly. Strain the final mixture and dispense into ramekins. The ramekins then go into a pan with water in it (halfway up the ramekins) and into a 325˚F oven. 

 The water is to make sure the créme mixture cooks evenly and doesn't dry out. They bake for 25-30 minutes, are removed from the oven and allowed to cool in a refrigerator for 4 hours or more. The créme brûlée should be eaten within two days of baking.

To prepare for consumption remove the baked créme brûlée from the fridge and sprinkle either white sugar or brown sugar evenly on the top. Take a butane torch of some kind and caramelize the sugar on top. This should leave a hard brownish shell of sugar. 

 Place fresh fruit on top and dig in.

 -Abby

Nom nom nom

Driving

Over the past two months I've been learning how to drive. I bought my first car a couple of weeks ago in preparation for getting my driver's license. These recent developments have led me to a new train of thought: What do I want to get out of driving? What features do I want in my car in the future? I've known for some time that I've wanted to make an electric car, which influenced my eventual decision to buy a Toyota Celica (a light, sporty, hatchback(I like hatchbacks)). But what else can I get in my car... I suppose I want my car to speak to me... What about flying capability? Why not, just because it's funny and awesome, plug in a flux capacitor and have a time traveling car(If time travel were possible, and exactly like it is in Back to the Future)? And then I thought, what if everyone actually had these as options...

Electric Car

This is the least absurd idea and actually more reasonable than most people think. I'm not positive of the statistics now with the new Volt and Leaf electric cars on the road, but back when I first started reading up on how to convert a car to electric almost a year ago I learned that most electric cars on the road were home built conversions. So sure, this really is an option for anyone willing to make the change, but one downside is that battery technology still isn't good enough to warrant a major change from gasoline, which is more energy dense.

Knight Rider

I didn't grow up when the crime fighting car was actively airing on television but I am aware, through the magic of pop culture, of the amazing awesomeness that was KITT. When I say I want a car that speaks to me, I don't mean metaphorically, I mean literally, and when I say literally I don't mean like certain cars from the 90s that my Dad described to me that would loudly warn you with a human recording if you left the door open. I want a car with at least a simple artificial intelligence that can make small talk maybe or even help with driving. It may be a challenge for me but I plan to make it a reality some day. But what if everyone had cars like that? I'm sure some people would find it disconcerting, if not a bit creepy. I understand that a car that can play chess with its driver and responds to the name HAL isn't for everyone, but I still think it would be cool. Not really an option for me at this point, but in the future I think my car will have so many voices it will sound like it has a Multiple-Personality Disorder.

Flight

The Jetsons, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, and tons of other Sci-Fi films and shows use the concept of flying cars. Those concepts all had varying understandings of what flying a car meant. For the Jetsons it didn't seem to be much of an issue, I can't recall ever seeing one of those crafts crashing (though that may be from ignorance of the show) and I remember seeing very little traffic unlike in the Fifth Element (or even the new Star Wars Movies) where there seemed to be millions of cars flying every which way. I feel like Blade Runner falls in between those two representations and may in fact be the most accurate vision. I'm not exactly sure if I'd want to have a flying car, but I think it would be fun to try it out, as long as I was assured I wouldn't be killed. Firstly, all the Sci-Fis seem to avoid talking about the mechanism of flight and just accept that it's possible (which is actually close to science fantasy, but whatever). This is probably because it's insanely difficult to make something that heavy just hover in the air, and it's also the reason why only crazy engineers (like me) are messing around with the idea. But just supposing that some easy mechanism is discovered making flying cars a reality for everyone, what would negative effects might we see? Just think of all of the people you know who drive... now how many of them are bad drivers? Now ask yourself, would you really want those people in control of a vehicle that can not only go left, right, forwards, and backwards, but also adds in a third dimension of up and down? I think not. Now of course there would be some sort of test like we have for driving already, but I feel like it's all just a waste of time. By the time we have flying car technology we might have some sort of teleportation, or some other crazy means of transportation, who knows. So, I think we ought to avoid flying cars, even if just to prevent five story traffic jams.

1.21 Jiggowatts

Now this is of course not possible, but I like to play devil's advocate, and so I'm saying "what if?" What if we could travel through time, and not only that but all of our time machines were in our cars? Now I'm sure a TARDIS could transform itself into a car rather easily, but changing a car into a time machine would be a challenge. Assuming you have to bend space-time or create a wormhole to do it for you, the amount of energy required would be far greater than I know how to or am willing to calculate for the sake of this post. A power source of this magnitude, even if we have the technology to build such a generator at this point in time, would certainly be bigger than a bread box, and definitely would not fit in a car. Buuuut, forgetting this issue and any others that I don't feel like addressing at this time I ask, what if we all had time traveling cars? This of course brings back the point about bad drivers. You thought giving them control in three dimensions was bad, what about four? Imagine for just a minute you're a bad driver. You start your day driving to work or whatever it is you drive to in the morning and BAM! You didn't just get T-boned pulling out of the drive way, you got inter-dimensionally-spliced with yourself from tomorrow morning because you were late and hit the wrong button. But even good drivers can make mistakes, especially if their driving at 88 mph and they don't have the luck of Marty McFly. Not only is time travel a bad idea when considering how many time machines would clog up the Universe trying to get to every point in time everywhere, but then just the ones that are driving, crashing into something because they didn't see it until they were inside of it... quite disastrous if you ask me. Ironically though, even if it's less safe than a flying car, I would still want a time traveling one, just because.

James

Big Bang Fist Bumps

I'm talking about one of the nerdiest fist bumps possible. James and I have come up with three variations of the normal fist bump that depict three different hypotheses about the end of the universe.

A fist bump, as you may know, is when two people, as a way of greeting, meet their fists in air sort of like punching each others' fists, like so:

Part 1. Typical fist bump

We took it further than this initial bump. We imagined that right after the bump our hands would move away symbolizing the Big Bang:

Part 2. Expansion!

 The Big Bang is of course the most popular cosmological model for the early universe. Through theory and observation scientists think that our universe started out probably from a single super dense point, created by quantum fluctuations, and then suddenly started expanding. Our fist bump is an accelerated depiction of the universe's timeline. Since we don't know and probably never will know how the universe will meet its end we decided to have three different fist bumps each depicting a popular theory for the demise of the universe. The Big Crunch, the Big Rip, and the Big Freeze.

The Big Crunch

This is probably the most satisfying of our fist bumps but, also the most conventional looking (I've seen "normal" people do something similar before.) The idea behind the Big Crunch is that the universe will eventually start reversing it's current motion and come together in a black hole singularity. After part 2 of the fist bump we extend our arms behind us a bit and then return them to the starting point with a clap.

Part 3a. The Big Crunch

 The Big Rip
This is the silliest fist bump out of the three. It's kind of impossible to do it accurately. This hypothesis states that the universe will continue to expand until even sub atomic particles are split apart by the infinite expansion. Part 3b is done by just continuing to move the hands away from each other until both people just start laughing. It can get pretty ridiculous.

Part 3b. Cannot be photographed well

The Big Freeze
My favorite fist bump and possible outcome of the universe. The universe expands forever reaching close to absolute zero, if it reaches maximum entropy (the amount of energy not available for useful work) then things will pretty much be frozen. No light or anything, all of the energy used up. To get this idea across James and I increase to distance between our hands and after a short period of time we freeze in place and just sit there for a moment.

Part 3c. Freeze!

Here's a video showing all three:

Abby

Martian Solenoids

So my sisters and I were discussing ideas about life on some moons in the solar system when the conversation turned toward terraforming. My oldest sister asked, "What place in the solar system would be the easiest to terraform?" I have a certain fondness for the idea of terraforming and colonizing Venus, so that's what I suggested, maybe with a little tongue in cheek. My other sister then pointed out the atmospheric and rotational issues that you'd have to deal with in order to make Venus habitable... so I nonchalantly brushed these points off and said I'd go with Mars then, because it's day is just over 24 hours (we all figured that changing a planet's rotation might be a little too difficult).

We toyed briefly with the idea of melting the (dry) ice caps to warm up the planet with a nice carbon dioxide atmosphere; but of course there are problems to consider when colonizing Mars as well, namely the lack of magnetic filed and therefore lack of protection for any atmosphere one might be able to produce on the planet. So, what is one to do to terraform Mars? Abby suggested building individual colonies as the easiest solution to the colonization problem, but to really terraform the planet for major inhabitation we all agreed that an artificial magnetic field was necessary.

So how does one go about making a magnetic field strong enough to mimic a planet's? Why, giant solenoids of course! And so I figured that what needs to be done on Mars before any major attempts at atmospheric production are started is that one should drill down as near to Mars' core as possible (assuming the mantle and outer core are mostly solid by now) and construct a set of enormous solenoids to produce artificial magnetic fields.

We all laughed at the total absurdity of it all, but I truly believe in this solution. Once a protective magnetic field can be produced, an atmosphere on Mars wouldn't be so easily stripped off by the solar winds, and permanent colonies could arise anywhere on the planet. Not to mention that plant life could then thrive in the Martian habitat (assuming all their basic needs besides the carbon dioxide had already been met). This in fact would be necessary for oxygen production and thus animal inhabitation.

It was quite a fun discussion and I'm sure there are many more angles to explore, but I think the best part of it all is finding an ingenious (if absurd) solution to these far off problems.

Welcome!

I spontaneously decided to create a blog today. I was inspired by a discussion I had with James (my brother). I thought we need to blog about this and just made it. We wondered what we would call it. The thing we definitely decided needed to be in the title was "science". My brother and I are skeptics & atheists, and thus science is ingrained into our interests and beings. This blog will be a nice outlet for our scientific ruminations. I hope you enjoy reading the posts that follow. :D

Abby