lessons from a bag of tea

fair warning: this one is a little geeky...

a couple of days a ago, i performed my usual ritual- stumble into work around 10 am, fill my Nalgene with water, and toss in a Constant Comment tea bag. this tea bag stays in my bottle for the rest of the day, and provides a stimulating reason to keep drinking water.

i entered our lab, plopped down in front of a computer, set my bottle on the desk in front of me, and started to work. a couple of minutes later, i glanced over and witnessed one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen- two wispy trails of dark colored water starting at each of the lowest corners of the bag, and gently making their way down to the bottom of the bottle.

at the bottom, of course, was the darkest liquid. moving upward, the bottle grew exponentially lighter over the course of 2 or 3 inches, the top of which marked the intersection of the trail of newly diffused tea water and the reservoir at the bottom.

i saw in those trails, a physical manifestation of so many things that had given my mind troubles over the years- Feynman Propagators, Green's functions, transfer functions- things that I'd since reconciled, but always using mental pictures as a guide. here in front of me, i could watch a drop of tea water propagate through space and time, slowly and so obviously diffusing into the greater mass, as it fell softly to the bottom.

i thought also about the approximations scientists sometimes make- particularly, the seemingly audacious assumptions of steady state. if the particle exists, it must always have existed, or, my favorite- it's a periodic function, extending to infinity through time and space. to heck with finite energy. to heck with common sense. it makes things easier. i concede that of course it does, though that does little to help me sleep at night. that sort of reasoning never sat well. i observed the trail about halfway up the bottle, considering whether that little section knew that the birth of this entire system, its universe, occurred mere minutes ago. likewise, did its behaviors indicate that its starting and ending points were only a foot apart? though an expert in tea bag diffusion may have seen things differently, to me the little section seemed oblivious. it was amazing- the only indication of anything finite (in this case, path length) was the fact that the tea hadn't completely diffused into the plane normal to its downward movement. i'd now seen firsthand how accurate these sorts of assumptions can be, and smiled as i knew i'd be sleeping well that night.

in addition to the analytic utility, the scene exhibited a fragile, graceful sort of beauty similar to that of a calla lily, or perhaps cirrus clouds. i watched transfixed as a tiny stream of particles meandered through the mixture, slowly dancing and twirling their way into the abyss. i picked up and held the bottle in one hand as i watched my tiny vibrations disturb the tea bag into oscillations. jagged lines now rapidly blurred as they descended. putting the bottle back down, i was amazed at how quickly the jagged line once again became a thin whisp- it took only a minute or two.

when i was finished watching the display, i took the bottle, shook it up, and drank it. interesting how beauty so often fuels a desire to consume or possess. or maybe i was just thirsty...