One morning in 1992, as scientist Sid Nagel of the University of Chicago stood at his kitchen counter getting breakfast, something caught his attention – a dried drip. That’s what you read – a dried coffee drip.
Now, a dried coffee drip is not normally cause for a “Eureka!” moment, but rather cause to grab a cloth and wipe it up without further thought. But not Sidney Q. Nagel! (I don’t know if that’s his actual middle initial; it just sounds more “scientificky.”) What caught Nagel’s attention was the way in which the drip had dried. Rather than having a uniform colour, the coffee spot had a dark concentration of minute coffee granules at the outer edges graduating to much lighter-colored toward the middle.
The pattern of drying didn’t make sense to Nagel. It flew in the face of all known physical laws! Yet, here, on his suburban countertop, the laws of physics had changed.
“How so?” you may ask with growing impatience. In this way: normally, materials suspended in liquid spread randomly and uniformly. Thus, the drip should have been a uniform colour, not with a dark edge and lighter middle.
“So what?” you may be thinking, but you’re not Sidney Q. Nagel experiencing an “Aha!” moment. He discussed his observation with an associate (both obviously with too much time on their hands), and he too initially remarked that the dried drip did not conform to physical laws. The following Friday, Nagel brought the problem to a weekly gathering of scientists. The mystery of the coffee drip quickly became the buzz among the university faculty. For months, though, no one could solve the puzzle (and they couldn’t be fired for goofing off because they had tenure).
Finally, a group of scientists came up with a solution. “The liquid,” wrote William Mullen in the Chicago Tribune, “puddles out until it is stopped or ‘pinned’ by roughness on the surface it travels across. Evaporation along those edges became a capillary ‘pull’ that draws tiny coffee grains dispersed evenly in the liquid out to the edge. By the time evaporation is complete, virtually all the coffee particles are at the edge, thus creating the telltale dark rim.”
Believe it or not, but the discovery could have practical applications for electronic and computer engineers, paint manufacturers, and molecular biologists.
“So what!?” you ask in exasperation. The ability to see the profound in the commonplace – to see a principle of physics in a coffee drip, for instance – is what makes breakthroughs in understanding. A similar way of seeing things helps us to know God – or ‘the divine,’ if you prefer – better. Either we can trudge through the day oblivious to the activity of God all around us, or we can pay attention to what God is trying to tell us in our circumstances. Those who are looking see the glory of God all around – even in coffee drips.
