Science!
One of the things I forgot: yesterday, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
metesten was making some Red Zinger tea for me, and it happened that the teacup was a modified glass beaker. This meant that we could clearly see the tea as it started to extract from the bag. And the first few wisps of color were green. It was kind of cool-looking, but then metesten had a realization. "I wonder," she mused, "whether it'll turn red if the pH goes down. tandw, how'd you like some lemon in your tea?" I allowed as how I would. A bit of lemon juice later, we'd established that whatever makes the red color is an acid/base indicator; the lemon juice changed the color pretty quickly. (That suggests that our dishwashing detergent is 1) basic and 2) leaves residues in dishes. Well, we already knew it was pretty basic by the way it attacks aluminum.)
metesten was making some Red Zinger tea for me, and it happened that the teacup was a modified glass beaker. This meant that we could clearly see the tea as it started to extract from the bag. And the first few wisps of color were green. It was kind of cool-looking, but then metesten had a realization. "I wonder," she mused, "whether it'll turn red if the pH goes down. tandw, how'd you like some lemon in your tea?" I allowed as how I would. A bit of lemon juice later, we'd established that whatever makes the red color is an acid/base indicator; the lemon juice changed the color pretty quickly. (That suggests that our dishwashing detergent is 1) basic and 2) leaves residues in dishes. Well, we already knew it was pretty basic by the way it attacks aluminum.)