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The Zero Gravity Coffee Cup
Presented by Science@NASA
High above our planet
in the realm of satellites and space stations,
the familiar rules of Earth do not apply.
The midday sky is as black as night.
There is no up and no down.
Dropped objects don't fall,
and hot air doesn't rise.
Of all the strange things that happen up there, however,
it is possible that the strangest happens to coffee.
In microgravity,
a simple morning 'cuppa Joe'
can be an out-of-this-world experience.
Physics professor Mark Weislogel
of Portland State University
has given a lot of thought to coffee-
and other fluids-in space,
and he describes what happens:
'For starters,' he says, 'it would be a chore just getting the coffee into the cup.
Absent the pull of gravity,
pouring liquids can be very tricky.'
'But, for the sake of argument,
let's suppose you are on the space station
and you have a cup of coffee in your hand.'
The most natural thing would be to tip the cup toward your lips,
but when you do....
'The coffee would be very hard to control,'.
'In fact, it probably wouldn't move.
You'd have to shake the cup toward your face
and hope that some of the hot liquid breaks loose
and floats toward your mouth.'
On the bright side,
you will probably be wide awake by the time the cup is empty.
Coffee is not the only liquid that misbehaves in space.
Cryogenic fuels, thermal coolants, potable water
and urine do it, too.
The behavior of fluids
is one of the most un-intuitive things in all of space flight.
This poses an extreme challenge for engineers
designing spacecraft systems that use fluids.
'Our intuition is all wrong,' laments Weislogel.
'When it comes to guessing what fluids will do in new systems,
we are often in the dark.'
To develop a better understanding of fluids in microgravity,
Weislogel and colleagues are conducting the Capillary Flow Experiment
onboard the International Space Station.
For instance, one of the devices in their experiment suite
looks at 'interior corners.'
If two solid surfaces meet at a narrow-enough angle,
fluids in microgravity naturally flow along the joint-
no pumping required.
This capillary effect
could be used to guide all kinds of fluids through spacecraft,
from cryogenic fuel to recycled waste water.
Capillary driven flow is difficult to study on Earth,
where it is dampened by gravity,
yet on the Space Station large scale corner flows
are easy to create and observe.
Weislogel and colleagues have already been granted three patents
for devices invented as a result of their work.
One is for a microgravity condensing heat exchanger.
Another describes a device that separates and controls multiphase fluids.
The third patent is for--
you guessed it--
a low-gravity coffee cup.
Astronaut Don Pettit,
who worked with the Capillary Flow Experiment
during his time on board the Space Station,
helped invent the cup,
and he shares the patent with Weislogel and two mathematicians,
Paul Concus and Robert Finn,
who performed the first theoretical analysis of the phenomenon.
Basically, one side of the cup has a sharp interior corner.
In the microgravity environment of the Space Station,
capillary forces send fluid flowing along the channel
right into the lips of the drinker.
'As you sip,
more fluid keeps coming,
and you can enjoy your coffee in a weightless environment--
clear down to the last drop,' says Pettit.
'This may well be what future space colonists use
when they want to have a celebration.'
Indeed, the patent application specifically mentions 'toasting'
as one of the uses of the device.
It's easy to imagine what they might be toasting:
toilets and air conditioners and fuel tanks and recycling systems,
all working better thanks to capillary flow experiments on the space station.
For more news about the everyday strangeness of space travel,
please visit science.nasa.gov