Updated: Fri, 10/11/2024 - 12:00

Campus/building access, classes and work will return to usual conditions, as of Saturday, Oct. 12. See Campus Public Safety website for details.


Accès au campus et aux immeubles, cours et modalités de travail : retour à la normale à compter du samedi 12 octobre. Complément d’information : Direction de la protection et de la prévention.

Subscribe to the OSS Weekly Newsletter!

You're not imagining that chocolate sludge at the bottom of your hot cocoa

If you're a fan of hot chocolate, then you're familiar with the dark sludge that you find once you reach the bottom of the mug. So are you a bad stirrer or is the chocolatey goop inevitable?

If you've made hot cocoa with powder, you've probably experienced the dark sludge at the bottom of the cup. This chocolate goop seems unavoidable, despite being absolutely certain that you dissolved all the powder when you first stirred your drink. For years I thought I was just a bad stirrer, but it turns out that the sludge actually forms as the drink cools down. As the hot cocoa cools, the solubility of the hot chocolate powder is reduced. This means that the amount of powder you can dissolve in a mug full of water or milk is lessened. So, as the temperature falls, the powder precipitates and collects at the bottom of your mug leaving the hard-to-clean but delicious chocolate goop.


@AdaMcVean

Back to top