Transcript[]
Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby
An animation shows the double doors of a courtroom. A watermark reads: TV-PG. Music from reality court TV show plays. A robot wearing a black turtleneck, Moby, pushes open the courtroom doors and walks to a podium in front of a jury box of robots. Typewriter sounds as text appears on-screen: "Moby: Plaintiff".
VOICE OVER: This is Moby, a self-published author. He purchased a half-caff caramel macchiato at a local coffee shop.
In a flashback, Moby is standing at the counter of a cafe holding a steaming mug. A boy with a manbun and a goatee, Tim, is the barista behind the counter. Moby sits at a table in front of a sunny cafe window, typing on his laptop with his mug beside him. Day turns to night outside.
VOICE OVER: But after writing about the rich history of the rubber band for just a few hours, his drink was ice cold!
Moby takes a sip of his mug, and spits out the liquid. Barista Tim points to a "No Refunds" sign.
VOICE OVER: The cafe wouldn't refund his money, and now he's suing.
Onscreen, barista Tim now walks through the courtroom double-doors and over to a podium next to Moby.
VOICE OVER: This is Tim, the cafe's barista. He says, the customer is always wrong. Plus, some know-it-all stuff about physics and molecules.
Onscreen, text scrolls up the screen in the opener to a reality court TV show show. Voiceover reads as it scrolls, ending in the logo for "The Beeple's Court."
VOICE OVER: What you are about to witness is real. The participants are not actors—they are actual litigants. Both parties have agreed to have their case settled here, before Judge Marilyn Mainframe, in our forum: The Beeples Court!
A robot in judge’s robes, Judge Marilyn Mainframe, bangs a gavel. Tim pulls out a letter.
TIM: Your Honor, I'd like to admit this letter into evidence… uh, just as soon as I read it.
Tim reads from a typed letter.
TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, how does a thermos keep my soup from getting cold? Thanks, Mrs. Nichols' class. Now, Your Honor, Mrs. Nichols' class brings up an interesting point. Because, as we've all noticed, hot things don't stay hot!
A mug of coffee steams next to a window in the evening.
TIM: Once soup, or cocoa, or single-origin fair trade coffee, comes off the stove, it starts to get colder.
Light changes to show it is the next morning. Moby comes in in a bathrobe, sips the coffee, and does a spit-shot.
TIM: And it'll keep cooling off until it's the same temperature as the room.
Lemonade is poured into a glass full of ice cubes. The ice cubes melt. Moby takes a sip, and spits it out.
TIM: Cold drinks do the opposite: They'll keep warming up until they reach the temperature of their surroundings.
MOBY: Beep!
Moby waves the letter.
TIM: Yes, putting a cold drink in a thermos will slow the warming. Or the cooling, if we're talking about a hot drink.
Animation shows a full thermos next to a window. A thermometer reading says 130 degrees.
TIM: So, the plaintiff's foofy espresso drink would stay hot longer… But not forever: wait long enough, and that macchiato will be room temperature. Thermoses work because they minimize heat transfer.
The Sun sets and then rises again, and the thermometer now reads 72 degrees.
TIM: Heat always flows from warmer objects to cooler ones. And the greater the difference in temperature, the faster it'll happen!
Split screen shows a full coffee cup sitting outdoors on a warm day and on a cold day. Animation shows greater heat loss on the cold day. Tim addresses the courtroom.
TIM: The only way to keep some coffee from cooling is to put it somewhere just as hot. Is the plaintiff suggesting I heat my establishment to 140 degrees?!
The robot courtroom audience becomes disorderly.
TIM: [voice rising as he speaks] Because, I-I really must point out, 140 is the only proper temperature for a macchiato, or for--
The robot judge bangs her gavel to quiet the courtroom. Tim is standing next to a drawing pad on an easel showing a drawing of a cup of coffee. It reads: “140 degrees.”
TIM: Heh, s-sorry, Your Honor, I-I get a little carried away. Now, we've established that heat's always on the move, from warmer to cooler objects…
Tim flips a page on the drawing pad to show a cutaway drawing of a thermos.
TIM: And that a thermos can slow this process down. But to understand why, we need to get closer… a lot closer.
Animation zooms into the drawing of the thermos and shows molecules jiggling around.
TIM: Coffee, like any other substance, is made of tiny particles called molecules. And they're constantly jiggling and bumping into each other. In other words, they have kinetic energy, the energy of motion. Of course, we can't see any of this microscopic action. But we can feel it: in the form of temperature. That's the average kinetic energy of all the molecules in an object. The warmer something feels, the faster its molecules are moving!
Animation shows a digital thermometer inserted into the thermos. The reading goes from 68 to 130 degrees. The judge bangs her gavel.
TIM: I'm getting to the point, Your Honor, I promise. Because all of this microscopic motion is what makes heat transfer happen!
Animation shows Moby's hands holding a cup of coffee from both sides, then zooms in to show molecules moving. As the bowl molecules bump into the hand molecules, the hand molecules turn brighter red and start moving faster.
TIM: First, through conduction: the transfer of kinetic energy by direct contact. When you hold a cup of coffee, your hands get warm. That's because molecules in the hot cup are slamming into molecules in your cooler hands. This is conduction.
An inset shows a fast red molecule slamming into a slow blue one. The faster molecules slows down, and the slower one speeds up.
TIM: With each collision, the faster molecule slows down, and the slower one speeds up. Multiply that by a bazillion molecules, and you can guess what happens.
Animation shows Moby's hands cupping the coffee. A thermometer in the coffee reads 125, then drops to 120.
TIM: Your hands, and the air all around the cup, absorb energy from the hot coffee. Sucking away its molecular speed, which we read as a drop in temperature. But what if there weren’t so many molecules around to bump into?
Animation shows a cut-away of a thermos, with space between its inner and outer walls.
TIM: That’s one way thermoses minimize heat transfer. They’re basically a bottle inside another bottle, with empty space in between. It’s a vacuum—a space with no molecules in it. So, there's nothing there for the molecules in that hot bottle to bump into. Heat loss through conduction happens only at the very top of the bottle, where it's attached to the outer container.
JUDGE MAINFRAME: Bloop?
TIM: Well, there is one type of heat transfer that can go through a vacuum. It’s called radiation. It also comes from the movement of particles, but on an even smaller scale. Molecules are made up of atoms, which you’ve probably seen drawn like this.
Animation shows a model of an atom, with electrons orbiting a nucleus.
TIM: Those little dots orbiting the center are electrons. When atoms are energized—like, when they're heated up—electrons absorb some of that energy. But they don't hang onto it for long. They release the energy as a form of invisible light known as radiation.
Animation shows a light wave shoot off from the atom and strike a molecule in the thermos's outer container, which turns red and vibrates more.
TIM: Molecules that absorb this radiation move faster, same as they would through conduction.
Animation shows the cutaway of the thermos, with light waves bouncing between its inner walls.
TIM: That's why the inside of thermoses are often made of shiny substances. Since radiation is a kind of light, these materials reflect a lot of it back inside.
Judge robot bangs gavel.
TIM: Sorry, Judge, just a third and final type of heat transfer to cover! It's called convection, and it happens when a substance is unevenly heated.
Animation shows a percolator on a gas burner. Animation shows water warming up at the bottom and moving upward, cooling along the way.
TIM: In convection, heat is transferred by molecules traveling from one place to another, instead of just jiggling back and forth. That’s why convection only happens in liquids and gases: They’re called fluids, because they have no fixed shape and flow easily. Heating water on a stove is a good example.
Animation shows red molecules spaced apart rising through the water. As they rise, they cool down, get closer to each other, and drop down to create a current.
TIM: The molecules at the bottom speed up, creating more space around themselves. This liquid becomes less dense, or tightly packed, making it lighter than the liquid above it. So, it rises through the heavier stuff, away from the heat source. But then it cools down, becoming denser...so it sinks again. Warmer liquid rises and displaces the colder liquid at the top. This flow of material is called a convection current.
Animation shows Tim in the courtroom, holding a percolator.
TIM: This vintage coffee percolator works on the principle of convection, and it makes a wonderfully balanced cup of--
Judge robot interrupts Tim by banging her gavel.
TIM: Rendering a decision?! But I was gonna froth some oat milk for my closing argument!
Animation shows Tim and Moby back in the coffee shop. From behind the counter, Tim looks defeated. He hands Moby a thermos.
Tim sighs.
TIM: One free half-caff caramel macchiato… in a thermos.
Moby drinks some caramel macchiato.
MOBY: Beep.
