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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • This is correct, and it isn’t just associated with acids. It’s because of an effect called ‘freezing point depression’, which is the same reason salt lowers the freezing point of water while raising its boiling point.

    There are a few explanations as to why this happens, with the easiest being this: if you add something that can’t freeze to something that can, then the whole thing will need to lose more energy to allow the whole mass to solidify because the un-freezing stuff physically interferes with the attempts of the freezing stuff to bind together.

    However, there is also the additional aspect of vapor pressure, which comes into play when adding things that can freeze to another thing that also freezes, but at a different temperature. I don’t really understand that at all, so I will pull from the Wikipedia article on it:

    The freezing point is the temperature at which the liquid solvent and solid solvent are at equilibrium, so that their vapor pressures are equal. When a non-volatile solute is added to a volatile liquid solvent, the solution vapour pressure will be lower than that of the pure solvent. As a result, the solid will reach equilibrium with the solution at a lower temperature than with the pure solvent. This explanation in terms of vapor pressure is equivalent to the argument based on chemical potential, since the chemical potential of a vapor is logarithmically related to pressure. All of the colligative properties result from a lowering of the chemical potential of the solvent in the presence of a solute. This lowering is an entropy effect. The greater randomness of the solution (as compared to the pure solvent) acts in opposition to freezing, so that a lower temperature must be reached, over a broader range, before equilibrium between the liquid solution and solid solution phases is achieved. Melting point determinations are commonly exploited in organic chemistry to aid in identifying substances and to ascertain their purity.

    So, TL;DR is that chemistry is weird, things react weird at the molecular level because of energy states, and that is what allows us to make ice cream!


  • I am good at finding things because I think about things in context of their place in the world.

    At my job, I am good at finding problems in data because I know how all the files work and how our systems interlink. If something is missing, I know where it gets taken from and work backwards from there. If some additional is there that shouldn’t be, I know the rules of why things get taken and can figure out why.

    At home, I can find objects easily because I know what they are used for and have a good memory, so I can easily remember the last thing an item was used for and start there. This helps a lot with a partner who has ADHD and is constantly misplacing things.

    My finding skills have also been great for finding stuff on the Internet, but Search Engine Optimization is slowly degrading that. I am still very good at finding deals on things people need on Craigslist though, as I am very good at figuring out which listings are good and which are ads just based on the description given.


  • A big thing that helped me is knowing that, even if nobody knows what it is like to be me, specifically, everything I have ever felt and experienced has been felt and experienced by at least one other person, somewhere. Feelings are far more universal that we realize as we are feeling them, and no matter how alone you feel, there are other people with that same feeling.

    This isn’t meant to minimize your experience. In fact, it enhanced mine. By realizing that a lot of people feel the same feelings as me, it helped me communicate better. Even if I have a hard time identifying the name of a feeling, describing it in general terms opens a new point of communication that can bridge a lot of gaps.

    For example, I have been able to go to a friend group and explain that, while jokes are okay, a particular joke made me feel unwelcome, and explained why. The fact that I felt excluded stopped being seen as a barrier, and instead it was the thing that started the conversation about the joke, why it was made, and it helped both parties learn some context for next time.

    Even if it doesn’t work in your current situation, it can help in similar, future situations by helping you avoid this feelings trap in the future. It has certainly helped me a lot.



  • Tofu! I never got a chance to try it growing up, but when I started reducing my meat I decided to give it a try. It is possibly the most versatile ingredient in my kitchen, and by far the easiest way to get protein.

    You can whip up a tofu scramble, throw it in smoothies/shakes, cube it and toss it in soup, fry it and serve with sauce over veggies, bake it with an herb coating to toss with pasta, even bread it to make katsu sandwiches! It takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it with, so it isn’t hard to make the dish taste the same as if it had meat, and it is much more forgiving.

    The trick is to get firm or extra firm tofu instead of medium or soft. Some people like super smooth tofu, but I find more people prefer the more solid versions.

    An honorable mention also goes to nutritional yeast. It is often that ‘something extra’ missing from dishes that have a cheesy taste to them, and is a great option to add depth to dishes if you are concerned about MSG for some reason. I like to toss some on my popcorn to make it taste like white cheddar, but you can use it in any savory dish. It is also an excellent source of B12, which a majority of people are deficient in.