Coffee has been a part of my daily life in the last few years. Not only for helping me to focus or “wake up” in tiring moments, but also because I simply enjoy its taste. Although I’m not addicted to it or anything like that*, I do drink quite a reasonable amount. However, even if coffee has been present in my life for quite some time, I had never stopped to think about caffeine itself too carefully before. It’s as if the topic passed unnoticed through me.
I do look at ingredient lists all the time and, particularly in this subject, try to have an idea of how much caffeine I consume, when possible. However, since it’s often hard to estimate it, caffeine consumption probably gets less attention from me than it should. And that’s one of the things I liked about Katie’s talk: it’s something that’ll stick to my mind every time I drink coffee, and make me more wary (even if only a bit) about my own consumption.
The most interesting part of the talk for me, however, was something entirely different. As a physics major, I end up rarely being in contact with areas like chemistry and biology. And it’s easy to get lost in one’s field and forget about the rest. In this sense, and considering I like those subjects, learning about the chemistry side of caffeine and similar substances was a pleasant surprise to me. For instance, I found it extremely interesting when Katie started explaining the separation process that makes “decaf”s and why some “decaf” drinks can still have substances with similar effects to caffeine (like theophylline) due to differences in molecular polarity (in the case of theophylline, an H-N bond in the molecule makes it polar, and it gets dissolved in the aqueous part during the separation – alongside the remainder of the drink – while the (non-polar) caffeine gets separated by being dissolved by a nonpolar substance).
Overall, it was very exciting, for me, to attend the talk, and I’m really happy to have learned about caffeine(&co) from a perspective/area completely different from the one I’m used to!
*(and I know this because it’s a bit funny/weird: even though I like coffee’s taste, if I’m not sleepy or don’t have many responsibilities – as in school breaks, for example – I usually spend days or weeks without coffee as I simply forget it exists!)
I drink 4 or 5 cups of coffee every day, so I probably am addicted, but I’m okay with that. In a biology class I took last year, we talked about caffeine and how it works, and I thought it was pretty interesting. I’m jealous that you can just forget coffee exists, I think it tastes too good to ever pass up. Your post makes me wonder if Cornell has a non-chemist accessible class about the chemistry of everyday substances. That would be really neat to take.
(Sorry for taking this long to reply. I didn’t notice, until recently, that there were comments on my post xD)
I don’t think we have a non-chemist accessible class about everyday chemistry, but I think it would be really interesting! Due to increasing complexity of our society, we often have little to no idea how everyday things work, so I think it’d be really nice to have something like that!
I can relate a lot to your coffee drinking habits, although for me it also tends to be one of those comfort things I fall back on when the semester starts getting rough. Some days I’m not tired but just sipping coffee can calm me down, which is ironic because it alerts the senses some.
I truly wish I could have attended this discussion because coffee is such an important part of my daily life– not necessarily from addiction because I’ve learned over the years how to wane off to avoid caffeine withdrawals, but because I feel it’s such deeply rooted in my culture.
(Sorry for taking this long to reply. I didn’t notice, until recently, that there were comments on my post xD)
Thanks for the reply!
Regarding coffee as a comfort thing, I completely understand! I sometimes go for it for comfort too, but, for me, this isn’t related to anything coffee-specific: any hot drink, like hot chocolate or tea, would do the trick for me! hahaha