We often imagine that good science is the kind of thing that studies the dynamics of distant stars and a cure for disease. Sure, it does work on these big problems. But it is just as focused on and important to our everyday experiences.

Here’s my prime example. This is me at home, stirring some hot chocolate. It turns out that hot chocolate can demonstrate a very novel effect that you probably have never noticed even if you’ve stirred hundreds of mugs of the beverage. Once you realize it’s right in front of you, you may be forever cursed/blessed with the tendency to tap the bottom of your mug after you’ve stirred the chocolate in.

My hope is that you would want to try this out and think of ways to investigate what’s going on. If you’re in one of my classes, you’ll probably be given this as an assignment or even as the subject of an entire lab. You would consider trying out variations to see if you can find what causes the effect: What if you used something other than hot chocolate? Or different kinds of hot chocolate? Or different mugs? Or other ingredients? By changing the conditions, you might start to narrow down what makes this effect. At the same time it can be really challenging, because changing one variable could change another; and sometimes we don’t even recognize when a variable is changing.

Something I like about this investigation is that it naturally makes you consider your own model about sound and the hot chocolate. When you decide to change something in this system, you naturally have some idea about why that may or may not work, and it’s based on what you’re imagining is happening in the hot chocolate and how you might think that sound works. The results of your test affect your model and give you insight into what test to try next. This is, in essence, how science works.

Studying the hot chocolate effect is one of my favorite science investigations in the whole world. I introduce it to students, teachers, and scientists whenever I can because:

1. Once you have experienced the effect, you may be forever cursed/blessed with tapping your mug of hot chocolate to hear this phenomenon, and you hopefully will share it with anyone else around when you are enjoying your beverage. You may even start investigating the effect by honing in on specific variables and testing specific conditions.
2. We often think science is about warping space and curing disease. And that’s correct, but those are just a couple of examples. Scientific pursuits are at hand in all kinds of scenarios, and sometimes you just have to look a little more closely. You might have stirred hot chocolate hundreds of times and never noticed this.
3. Also, people–especially scientists–often think they know the explanation for this right away. They usually don’t. (I’m speaking for myself as well.) And why should they? There’s a lot going on here, and we should embrace not knowing right away. Simply diving into this human endeavor of science is something we should celebrate.
4. And even when you understand an “answer” to this, it usually isn’t finished. One “answer” just leads to more questions, and this effect is a prime example of where this can lead you down lots of rabbit holes.

Enjoy your hot chocolate, and your science.