Ice Cream Science, Online Language. July 26, 2019, Part 2

Science Friday

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🗓️ 26 July 2019

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Have you ever tried to make your favorite rocky road flavored ice cream at home, but your chocolate ice cream turns out a little crunchier than you hoped? And your ribbons of marshmallow are more like frozen, sugary shards? Chemist Matt Hartings and ice cream maker Ben Van Leeuwen, co-founder of Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream in New York City, talk about the science behind how milk, sugar, and eggs turn into your favorite frozen desserts. They’ll chat about the sweet science behind other frozen delights, too—like how the size of water crystals affect texture and how you can make a scoopable vegan ice cream. Are you a fluent texter? Are you eloquent with your emoji? DOES WRITING IN ALL CAPS SOUND LIKE SCREAMING TO YOU? Maybe you’ve become accustomed to delivering just the right degree of snark using ~~sparkly tildes~~… Or you feel that slight sense of aggression when someone ends a simple text to you with a period. In her new book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores some of the ways that online communication has changed the way we write informally, from the early days of computer bulletin boards to today’s Facebook and Twitter memes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Molly Webster. Irafledo is away. Later in the hour, we'll be talking about how online communication has changed the way we write. It's the topic of a new book, because Internet. But first, summer means it's time for ice cream. Have you ever had one favorite flavor you keep ordering? And then you thought to yourself, you know what? I could probably make this. Admittedly, I've never had that thought. But if you were the person
0:24.6	that had that thought, you got home, you mixed all the ingredients together, and then you kind of got
0:30.0	like a frozen vanilla ice cube or a chocolate chunk that was just like a chunk of chocolate.
0:35.2	Ice cream and all frozen desserts are not just delicious.
0:39.3	They're very complicated chemically.
0:42.2	There are a mix of ice crystals and emulsifiers and a lot of air bubbles.
0:47.1	So my next guests are here to tell us about the science behind these frozen treats
0:51.1	and to help you get the perfect homemade scoop each time.
0:56.3	So I would like to welcome to the table, Matt Hardings, a professor of chemistry at American
1:01.2	University in Washington, D.C. He's a home ice cream maker and author of the book, Chemistry in
1:06.8	Your Kitchen, and Ben Van Llewin, co-founder of Van Lewin Artisan Ice Cream based here in New York.
1:16.2	And if you have had a frozen dessert fail, we want to hear from you.
1:20.3	What are your science questions about getting the perfect ice cream or frozen custard?
1:24.0	You can give us a call.
1:25.4	Our number is 844-724-8255. That's 844-sai-talk, or tweet
1:32.7	us at SciFri. So, Matt, I'm going to start with you down there in DC. You call ice cream
1:38.3	a mesh network, something I've never heard ice cream described as before. What do you mean by that? And what do you mean by
1:45.2	that, scientifically speaking? Right. Well, think about just a sponge, right? And when a sponge
1:52.2	is dry, right, it's sort of dry and crumply, but when you put it in water, it soaks all that water
1:57.5	up and it's squishy and it has a completely different texture.
2:01.8	And not only does the sponge change in texture, but the water changes in texture, too, right?
2:07.2	You go from liquid water that slashes around, and now it's stuck inside of that sponge.
	...

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