Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?

[austin_dern]

A 1.5 Liter bottle of Coke Light with Lemon that I bought from the apartment complex's convenience store -- this is the one with the kid who laid some poetry on me with that comment about not enough money to spend growing older -- turned out to be flat. Really, horribly, absolutely flat. Not a bubble in the drink, and I gave it a fair try, including refrigerating it to the point small ice crystals formed, which you must agree is pretty cool. But, alas, it's flat. Probably somewhere in the process of being bought by the convenience store, shipped, held, and waiting around for the shelves it spent enough time in the heat and sun to lose whatever fizz it might have had.

Now, to show what an irrational cheapskate I am, I tried to not waste the S$1.85 that this cost by actually drinking the stuff. I like the taste when it's fresh, but when it's flat -- when it's as completely flat as this is -- it's like drinking paint compounds. The only thing worse than one sip is a longer sip. And it's getting worse each day. It makes Coke Light with Vanilla taste appealing. (Alas, Coke Light with Lime hasn't made it to Singapore yet.)

I did give in and buy a new bottle, fresh and crisp, but as I started pouring the flat one into the sink I realized -- there has got to be some kind of kitchen chemistry that I can do with about a liter of black, acidic liquid. I'm giving it a bit of a try in getting out some ancient pizza stains in the metal tray that goes into the toaster oven, but that's a pretty unimaginative use, and I don't think it's going to work anyway.

Trivia: In 1762 Britain's Board of Longitude awarded £300 to mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler for his studies of the movements of the Earth and Moon around the Sun. Source: Longitude, Dava Sobel.

Currently Reading: Castlereagh, C J Bartlett.

Comments

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

Pour it into an ice tray and make Coke ice cubes? (Or add toothpicks to make popsicles)

Mix some flat Coke with the fizzy Coke to stretch things out?

[reptilemammal.livejournal.com]

Try cleaning toilets with it, although coke does this better one of the finest solvents I know of.

If you didn't want to waste it you could of do silly science experimet where you re-fizz cola using some Dry ICE (C02 I belive) it makes for quite the look for Halloween as it mists around everywhere.

You can mix it with other drinks, I particularly like red punch under orange slice it gives you one of those Star Trek looking drinks, where the color starts as one and changes it to the other. And of course photograph it, right you have a camera.

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

According to the MythBusters, cola can remove bloodstains, shine chrome, and clean a penny. I'm not sure about cleaning a toilet with it, though....

[orv.livejournal.com]

It works for those things 'cause it's a weak acid. Vinegar works for the same reason.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I haven't got any vinegar, so they would have to work quite differently.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

All right, but I'm out of chrome and they stopped minting pennies in 2001. Bloodstains I'm happily short on, so I'm not sure what's left to clean.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

re-fizz cola using some Dry ICE

I've tried that before, and it doesn't work too well. You really can't get the CO2 to go into solution without pressure.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'd suspected it might not; hard to see how to get the carbon dioxide dissolved well. I suppose there'd be small enough glasses and samples that might make it close enough, though.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You know, there might be some dry ice available, since it is so close to Halloween. If I do make a special effects foam out of it I'll try to take pictures. I do have two laser pointers that I could use to heighten things, if I can do them at all.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that the soda is past the point it's worth trying to drink. I do think there'd be a use, ideally an oddball one, though.

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

Soda *that* flat and unappealing may well of suffered a containment leak in the bottle. (It's rare to have it go completely dead under normal circumstances, unless the bottle is literally *months* old.) I definately wouldn't use it for anything involving passing it through your gastrointestinal tract.

On the bright side diet soda is so fundimentally lacking in nutrative value nothing will grow in it, so you're probably safe if you insist. ;^>

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a leak somewhere; bottles don't get the most delicate of care along most of the steps in the sales chain here. I suppose I'm used to thinking of them as getting old because the imported Dr Pepper is always old enough to be horrible.

Now, the way things grow around here, I do expect something will grow in the soda if I leave it long enough, even in the fridge. I don't know what, but it may be a valuable new antibiotic.