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Forget iPhones: coffee is possibly the single greatest discovery on planet earth. It's warm, delicious, heart-healthy (in moderate doses, of course), and it goes with just about anything. Not to mention, it's a great way to start your day.
For this reason, scientists love to do research on this stuff--even outrageous research like "what color mug does coffee taste best in?"
You won't believe some of the things that they found out.
The color of your mug matters.
Have you ever noticed that when you drink coffee out of a white mug, it's a little bit on the bitter side? Researchers found that the contrast between the color of coffee and a white mug makes the joe look and taste bolder. That means that drinking coffee out of a clear/glass mug will actually make it taste sweeter.
You should always drink your coffee around these times.
We've been conditioned to want our morning cup of joe in, well, the morning. Steven Miller, a psychology professor at Rosalind Franklin University, disagrees with that notion, saying that having your coffee in the morning is actually probably the worst time to have your coffee. If you look at the circadian rhythms, or, more specifically, the points when our levels of cortisol (the hormone that makes us feel awake and alert) are at their lowest, it is apparent that we should be drinking our coffee in the late morning (between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.) and during the afternoon (between 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.).
This is the optimal temperature to serve coffee.
Researchers at the University of Texas where apparently tired of burning their tongue on scalding hot coffee (who isn't?), so they set out to find the optimal temperature for coffee so it's perfectly hot. They rounded up 300 test subjects to determine what temperature makes the coffee hot without burning the subject's mouth. The answer: 136 degrees Fahrenheit.
The "Coffee-Ring" Effect.
Have you ever noticed that when you spill coffee on your shirt, it almost looks like a tree-stump when it dries? You know, light on the inside, dark around the edges? For more than a decade, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania tried to figure out why it did that. Turns out, the shape of the particles were the culprits. Round particles form a defined outer ring, while elongated ones do not.
A coffee nap is the best kind of nap.
You probably would never think to drink a cup of coffee and then take a 15 minute nap, but this is actually an incredibly efficient way to boost your energy fast. As you may know, coffee doesn't exactly start working instantly. You'll need to wait about 15 minutes for it to kick in. So, if you take a power nap (anywhere between 10-15 minutes) while you're waiting for the caffeine to kick in, you'll wake up just when the effects start to take over, making you feel more awake and refreshed than if you did either one on it's own.
Four coffees a day keeps the ringing at bay.
Have you ever drank so much coffee that you begin to have a ringing in your ears? It's a little scary, so many (obviously) would like to avoid it. A study tracked the incidence of tinnitus (the ringing in your ear) among 65,000 American women over the course of 18 years. Those who had one cup of coffee per day were 15 percent more likely to have tinnitus than those who had four or more.
What do you think about these studies? Which one surprised you the most? Let us know what you think in the comments!
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