A cafe-physics review with a difference. In that, it’s not so much a review as an invitation. What do you notice in a café?
Last week, I had the opportunity to try Artisan’s Ealing branch. Although I had found a lot to notice on my previous visit to the East Sheen branch, I had a very specific reason for visiting the Ealing location of this small chain of four cafés. The coffee (espresso) was reliably good. Smooth and drinkable in a friendly atmosphere. Just as with the café in East Sheen, there were a good selection of edibles at the counter and plenty to notice. The light shades were immediately outstanding as something to notice while a framed ‘hole in the wall’ provided a conversation point. The café was very busy and while there was plenty of seating with many tables, we were still lucky to have got a table for two near the back. Behind us there was a lesson going on in the coffee school while on the wall was the calendar for the space booking downstairs. And it was this that I had come here for.
A couple of months ago, Artisan announced that this space would be available to rent to provide a friendly space (with coffee) for the meetings of local small businesses or charities. This stayed in the back of my mind for a while as it came about at roughly the same time as an idea for Bean Thinking.
There are a couple of us who are interested in meeting, about once a month, to discuss science. As ‘science’ is quite a big subject, we thought we would limit it to science that is associated with coffee or with the café at which we are meeting. Perhaps readers of this website may realise that this is not such a restriction, it is quite easy to connect coffee to the cosmic microwave background radiation of the Universe or to chromatography and analytical chemistry. If we were to meet in a location such as Artisan, there should be plenty more food for thoughts. The lampshades prompted me to consider what made substances opaque or transparent? Where is the link to coffee and methods for measuring the coffee extraction? The hole in the wall suggested thoughts about the algorithms behind cash machines. I’m sure that there is plenty more to notice if we take the time to see it.
And so this is an invitation. Would you like to join us in exploring what we each notice about the science of our surroundings? The plan would be to meet once a month, probably starting late January 2019 or early February (date and location to be confirmed). An afternoon on the weekend is probably better than an evening and we’d probably stay for an hour or two. You do not have to be a practising scientist to come along indeed, it would be great if we could have people from a variety of walks of life. The idea is not (necessarily) to answer scientific questions that we each may have but instead to explore the science behind the questions, to find the connections that form our ideas of the universe. To really notice our surroundings and our coffees (tea drinkers would also be welcome). As a consequence of this, mobile phones/laptops etc. will be discouraged during the afternoon. We’d like to notice things around us and not be distracted by what a search engine suggests about it; if we think a search engine could help us, we’ll use it after we’ve left and come back the following month to discuss the issues further. So, if you are curious, would like to explore what you notice and can tolerate keeping your phone on silent and in your pocket for an afternoon, please do come along, it would be great to meet some of you.
In order to understand whether there would be any interest in this idea and to hear your input about the format, content, location, time etc. I have set up a mailing list for these cafe-science-spaces. Please do sign up to the mailing list to hear the latest announcements concerning these events and also to email me back to contribute your opinion. You can sign up to the mailing list using the sign up form below. Alternatively, if you don’t want to sign up to the mailing list but do want to hear more, I will be advertising the events on Twitter and Facebook so please do feel free to follow me there.