There are all kinds of examples of this from cheap appliances to hot house flowers, but sometimes it can be useful.
For my example I point to Diet Coke, which I'd freebase if I could. I usually buy it in 2-liter bottles and keep them on their side in the fridge. Diet Coke starts to degrade when it is depressurized and exposed to oxygen. Which is why I store them on their side. I can't do anything about the oxygen, but I can preserve the pressure as long as possible.
So I have it in a vacuum thermal coffee mug from Starbuck's which I store in the refrigerator. When I first crack into a bottle and pour it into the container, it bubbles up to the point I'm waiting 5 minutes to fill the stupid thing. But one morning I pulled the container from the fridge and it still had diet coke in it, though very flat. So I dumped it into the sink but I didn't rinse it because I wanted to preserve the internal temperature.
When I poured the diet coke in, the foaming was nowhere near as slow or inflated. Took under a minute to fill. I tried it again hours later with the same result.
After dumping old diet coke from the container all that's left is what's stuck to the sides. With such a small amount of whatever oxidized chemical on the walls, the fact it has such a profound reaction with a new bottle of diet coke (reducing foaming without depleting the carbonation) leads me to think it's a catalytic reaction. But what kind of free flowing catalyzing chemical could they be using? And how do they make it self-destruct into a nasty, flat fluid?
I know why, of course, to sell more Coke.
For my example I point to Diet Coke, which I'd freebase if I could. I usually buy it in 2-liter bottles and keep them on their side in the fridge. Diet Coke starts to degrade when it is depressurized and exposed to oxygen. Which is why I store them on their side. I can't do anything about the oxygen, but I can preserve the pressure as long as possible.
So I have it in a vacuum thermal coffee mug from Starbuck's which I store in the refrigerator. When I first crack into a bottle and pour it into the container, it bubbles up to the point I'm waiting 5 minutes to fill the stupid thing. But one morning I pulled the container from the fridge and it still had diet coke in it, though very flat. So I dumped it into the sink but I didn't rinse it because I wanted to preserve the internal temperature.
When I poured the diet coke in, the foaming was nowhere near as slow or inflated. Took under a minute to fill. I tried it again hours later with the same result.
After dumping old diet coke from the container all that's left is what's stuck to the sides. With such a small amount of whatever oxidized chemical on the walls, the fact it has such a profound reaction with a new bottle of diet coke (reducing foaming without depleting the carbonation) leads me to think it's a catalytic reaction. But what kind of free flowing catalyzing chemical could they be using? And how do they make it self-destruct into a nasty, flat fluid?
I know why, of course, to sell more Coke.
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