Coffee in Hammersmith – Bean Thinking

Antipode coffee Hammersmith — Outside Antipode, Hammersmith.

At the end of Fulham Palace Road, just next to the Hammersmith gyratory is Antipode, an Australian influenced (the clues to this are not so subtle) cafe. In truth, I have been to Antipode a few times now but not to take time to properly take it in. Once was after a tricky teaching session where it was difficult to sit back and reflect on anything but what had happened in the previous few hours, another time I was talking to someone rather than taking time to think about the location. There seems an urgent need for us now to take some time out and think about where we are and what we think. Indeed, part of the point of Bean Thinking is to explore how this space to ponder can be found in any cafe, if we but pause to look. Would this visit to Antipode be different?

Outside the cafe, a few tables were arranged so that you can enjoy your coffee in the open, next to the glass front window. Strangely the chairs/stools for these tables were stacked inside, possibly because it had become chilly again after a brief warm spell earlier in the year. A picture of a takeaway cup was drawn on the window as if to emphasise what you may expect to find inside, reminiscent of the old signs advertising coffee houses of the past. Going in, the counter is on the right and, while there was a selection of cakes etc. I opted to stick with the long black that afternoon. A seating area is at the back of the cafe where there are about 4 separated tables with a bench seat running along behind them with a fifth table along the rear wall.

Coffee at Antipode, pink salt, brown sugar, reflections and shadows. And a hint as to Bean Thinking — Coffee, salt and sugar. What do you see?

The coffee was drinkably fruity. More apples and redcurrants to my palette. On the table behind my coffee was a jar of pink salt and another of brown sugar. Which got me thinking about crystal structures and how it is often impurity, rather than purity that gives precious stones their colour. Is there a metaphor there?

But a second effect jolted to my attention. Someone sat down on the bench seat just along from me and as she sat down so I went up: a little see-saw. Across the room from me was a picture which, somewhat strangely, had two picture hooks either side of it, almost balancing each other on an imaginary line across the frame. Behind the table adjacent to me was a picture with a caption, to the effect of there being a very thin line between love and hate. Was this another instance of balance and equivalence?

Balance is something that we use in physics a lot, from the balance of forces to the use of balances in experiments. The imminent redefinition of the unit of the kilogram is based on a balance of forces. In the new definition, a balance is used so that the gravitational force pulling a mass down will be perfectly balanced by an electrically induced magnetic field pushing the mass up. The redefinition means that to calibrate 1Kg, scientists will no longer have to compare their 1Kg mass to the mass of a lump of platinum-iridium kept in Paris. The redefined kilogram will instead be calibrated based on its relation to Planck’s constant. This means that any lab around the world can calibrate the kg, they do not have to rely on copies of the mass kept in Paris.

Victoria Regina: What changes have happened since this post box was installed here in Hammersmith? What changes will do so before it is finally retired?

The redefinition of the kg is going to happen on 20 May, 2019 (world metrology day). On a day to day basis, it probably will not affect many of us that much. Our 20g of coffee measured out to brew our morning coffee is going to be, to all intents and purposes, the same 20g as we would have measured on the 19 May 2019. Nonetheless, the changes are important not just for the metrology community but also for the way that we do science. In the past, all of our units were related to fixed, physical objects. The metre was defined by the length of a metal rod, the second was originally defined as being 1/86400 of the mean solar day and the kilogram by the aforementioned lump of PtIr in Paris. The kg was the last of the units to still be defined by a unique physical object. As of 20 May 2019, each of these units will be related to physical constants meaning that at no point will we have to go to a lab elsewhere and check that my kg is the same as your kg.

As I left Antipode, I noticed the post box just outside with “VR” on it. The post box has been there since the time of Queen Victoria. How things have changed since scientists wrote to each other with news of their latest experiments, scientific papers were posted to journals and measured lengths were compared to a physical ‘metre’ long metal rod! How things change as we move ever faster emailing results around and tweeting our latest news. We are, in 2019, moving from calibrations based on weighing physical objects to measuring the balance relative to physical constants that were just being discovered at the point that post box first came into service. And yet we humans don’t change much. We still need time to ponder balance from false balance, equivalence from false equivalence. It is not a contradiction to say that it is urgent that we find a way of pausing and reflecting on some very weighty issues.

Antipode is at 28 Fulham Palace Road, W6 9PH

Echoes of Bach at Amoret, Hammersmith

Amoret coffee Hammersmith — Amoret, so new it still didn’t have its name on the outside.

Amoret is a new addition to the coffee scene over in Hammersmith. Just up the road from the Hammersmith & City line entrance of Hammersmith tube station, I nearly missed this cute cafe when I walked past as it had no name on its frontage, nor did it have the chalk board that is characteristic of many cafes. Fortunately however, I had the address and so double backed to find a great little cafe. It appears that that majority of Amoret’s business comes from take-away orders although there is a small seating area at the back (it is small, when we visited in February, there were two chairs and a couple of tables/stools). If you are fortunate enough though to be able to take a seat at the back of the cafe, I would thoroughly recommend doing so. Not only can you enjoy good coffee in a nice environment, the friendly people behind the bar were very happy to chat about their coffee and cafe. Moreover, there is plenty to notice from this observation post at the back of the cafe.

When we visited, the espresso based coffee was by Campbell and Syme, with V60s that featured different guest roasters (though it seems that other roasters also regularly feature for the espressos). I had a coffee from Panama, roasted by Union, which featured the word “caramel” in its tasting notes. I have simple tastes (‘caramel’ or ‘chocolate’ descriptions always go down well) but it was a great coffee. Complementary water was available at the counter with take-away cups (and water ‘glasses’ ) that were compostable and biodegradable*. As the very friendly staff brought my coffee to the table, I noticed that the ‘table’ that I had put my water on was in fact a metal drum that sounded ‘clang’ as the cup was put down. The sound of the drum immediately suggested that the drum was hollow. We all recognise the sound of a hollow drum, it is partly about the pitch of the sound, but partly about the echoes that we hear as the sound reverberates inside the metal.

Kettle drum at Amoret — After I had enjoyed my filter! The table-drum at Amoret. Does the drum sound the same in summer?

Although it appears simple, the sound made by the drum is influenced by many aspects of the drum’s construction and surroundings. The stiffness of the metal and the atmospheric pressure affect the way that the drum’s surface vibrates, while the size of the drum and the speed of sound in air also affect the note, or pitch, that we hear. How is the sound of the drum affected by a change in its surroundings? For example, if the atmosphere in Amoret got much warmer, the speed of sound would increase, how would that affect the sound of the table-drum?

A few years ago, Professor Timothy Leighton was wondering how the properties of the atmosphere affected the sounds of musical instruments. Specifically, he wondered what instruments would sound like on other planets. Take Venus. Venus is a planet with a very dense, very hot atmosphere. The surface temperature on Venus is 457C (Earth’s average is approx 14C) while the atmospheric pressure is 90 Bar (Earth’s average: 1 Bar). As it gets hotter, the speed of sound increases and so, to a first approximation, the note made by the drum-table at Amoret will sound higher as the air gets warmer. However, the metal of the drum is also hotter on Venus (so less stiff) and the density and pressure of Venus’ atmosphere will act to further complicate things. So to start thinking about how things sound on Venus, we would be more sensible to think about a simpler instrument, such as an organ, which is only affected by the change of the speed of sound†. Take the famous case of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Played on Venus, the researchers found that, rather than be in D minor (293.66 Hz), it would have the pitch of F minor (at 349.23 Hz). You can hear Bach’s Toccata on Venus (Mars and Titan) here.

What about a human voice, how would a person sound on Venus (were they able to survive)? In humans, the pitch of the voice is determined by the rate of vibration of the vocal cords. So it is possible to construct a speech synthesiser to imitate human speech by modelling such a voice ‘box’. Erasmus Darwin, (grandfather to Charles) made such a device in around 1770 with wood, leather and silk‡. Darwin’s voice synthesiser could pronouce the sounds ‘p’, ‘m’, ‘b’ and ‘a’ and so ‘mama’, ‘papa’, ‘map’ and ‘pam’, which by some accounts was convincing enough to fool people into thinking there was a small child in the room. Why did people think that Erasmus’ ‘child’ was small? It turns out that just as with the drum, when we listen to people speak, we do not just register their pitch but also the echoes on their voice. Each time we make a sound, the sound travels from the vocal cords down to the lungs (where it gets reflected upwards) and up to the mouth (where it gets reflected downwards). We subconsciously listen for these echoes and, if they take a long time to appear, we deduce that the person is large (there is a greater distance between their voice box and their lungs). If the echo comes back quickly, clearly the distance between the voice box and the lungs is smaller and hence the person is smaller. Just like the drum at Amoret, the human voice is a bit more tricky to model on Venus than Erasmus Darwin’s device allowed for.

Leighton and co-author Andi Petulescu considered the question of the sound of the human voice on Venus in their 2009 paper. Firstly they said, the density of Venus’ atmosphere would make the vocal cords vibrate more slowly, so the person speaking would sound as if they had a deeper voice. But secondly, the high speed of sound on Venus would mean that those echoes that we listen for would come back very quickly, so we would perceive the speaker as being small. What does this sound like? A few years ago, a Dutch TV show set this very topic as a question for their annual quiz and answered it by one of the co-hosts singing Banarama’s “Venus” with, and without, the Venus voice changing software of Leighton. If you understand Dutch, the full clip is below. If you don’t understand Dutch but would just like to find out how you would sound on Venus while singing Banarama, forward to 7 minutes in for the version on Earth and 7m46 in for the Venus version.

It is not easy for us to travel to Venus to investigate whether Prof. Leighton was correct. It is possible for us to repeatedly visit Amoret to investigate how the coffee cups sound as they are put on the drum as the temperature changes around us. This seems a fantastic excuse to revisit to me.

Amoret is at 11 Beadon Road, W6 0EA

‡”Erasmus Darwin – A life of unequalled achievement” by Desmon King-Hele was published by Giles de la Mare Publishers (1999)

* It should be noted that ‘compostable’ plastic has a very specific definition that does not mean that it can necessarily be composted in the way that you or I would understand the term, as I described in more detail here. Nonetheless, it is definitely a significant improvement from conventional plastic and I would love to see more cafes follow suit with environmentally sound packaging.

† Of course this comes with a fair few caveats, not least the fact that the organ has to have flue pipes only. I would thoroughly recommend browsing Professor Timothy Leighton’s excellent webpage on this and other aspects of acoustics which you can find here.