Water music 🎶

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There is a really cool website for Hydrological Soundscapes of different rivers see  https://hydrologicalsoundscapes.github.io/

Next to such calming music, water inspired artists. Some of them might even be deep inside hydrologists. A long time on my to-do list is to make a list of different water-related songs.  

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The water top 2000 (not ranked and in progress):

• TOOL - FLOOD
• Neil Young - Be the Rain
• Weezer - Here Comes the Rain
• Phil Collins - I Wish It Would Rain Down
• Luka Bloom - I am bogman
• Talkin Heads - Once in a life , about geohydrology
• Talking heads - take me to the river
• Dave Matthews Band - Don't drink the water
• Waterboys - this is the sea 
• Creedence Clearwater Revival - who'll stop the rain
• Led Zeppelin - the rain song
• Wolfheart - the flood
• Vance Joy - Fire and flood
• The FRAMES - Fitzcarraldo 
• Tom Petty - Learning to fly
• Gun N'Roses - November Rain
• dEUS - One thing about waves
• Levellers - Maid of the river 
• The decemberists - down by the water
• Jovanotti feat. Bombino - Si Alza il Vento
• Blind Melon - "No Rain" 

Check out the regular updated youtube playlist  and if you have water songs, please share them.

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Coffee hydrology ☕️

"One more cup of coffee 'fore I go..." (click 2 check Bob's song) 

 

Coffee a magical potion. Coffee is a potent drink for writing the thesis or writing papers or to start interesting hydrological discussions. Not only the fuel of work but also a ritual and moment of peace. 

Fika with friends and colleagues.

Bitter taste to pleasant 

My first contact with coffee-ish beverages was at a summer job on a tulip farm. A dispenser supplied instant coffee with milk powder. Luke water made the powerder drinkable. Too much sugar made the bitter taste disappear and become drinkable and, more importantly, supplied extra energy to chop off lily and tulip heads.

The instant coffee did not stick. The first foamy cappuccino on holiday instead did. Young and unfamiliar with C8H10N4O2, five cups were too much to stop jumping around. A lesson learned: The coffee intake remained relatively low afterwards. On cycling holidays, filter coffee replaced the instant cappuccino slowly, and to save weight, sugar was rationed. 

The bitter coffee taste, slowly changed to something tasty - especially well-brewed bitter-sweet espresso. 

Exploreing coffee berries

It took until my internship/thesis in the Makanya catchment in Tanazia that I encountered real coffee. After weeks of instant coffee, the common type of brewing, high up in the mountains of the catchment grew green and orange red berries on a bush. Coffee! We were inviated with the village head who invited us for coffee. Instead of instant coffee this time real coffee rosted on a fire, coursly grinded and brewn with coffee. I expected a strong cup of joe and dreamt of real espresso. Instead it was a weak brew, kind of diluted brown water. Althought the taste was not the one I expected the guesture wonderful. 

Coffee berries on the bush

Fresh coffee berries in Tana

The filter coffee turned to Moka and a morning ritual. 

During my post-doc travel to Costa Rica, I encountered a different way of brewing coffee: in a sock. Coffee is ground coarsely and in a cotton/ linen sock shape filter where hot water is poured in. Depending on the person who brews, it can become a nice strong brew or "agua chacha" (tasteless brown water). Costa Rica is a beautiful country and produces world-class coffee with unique terroirs creating different tastes.

Wonderful espresso in Costa Rica

Coffee hydrology

During the pandemic, I explored the world of special coffees from home. Reading and watching up on coffee e.g.

How to brew - coffee and water ratio
Recipes

I suddenly realized while teaching online that coffee is next to a drink, which is also a great analogy to explain hydrological processes. 

In the end, brewing coffee is nothing more than Darcy's law  Q=-K x A x I  

 

Discharge (Q) depends on the material property (K), the filter area (A) and the gradient over the filter (I). The material property K depends on the grind size of the filter and the preferential flow path through macropores or evenly distributed grains. The gradient depends on the amount of water poured on the filter or pressure applied in a fully automated coffee machine. The flow rate and grain size distribution affect the extraction efficiency, i.e., how much caffeine the water can extract from the grind. In the end, it is similar to hydrochemistry, how rainfall interacts with soil and geology, and how long water resides in the subsurface. There are many different YouTube channels (e.g. J. Hoffmann) to learn about coffee, and when observing, also learn about geohydrology subconsciously.  

Next to popular YouTubes and wesites there is acctual a field of coffee sciences with papers in journals on coffee check, e.g.

• Coffee extraction: A review of parameters and their influence on the physicochemical characteristics and flavour of coffee brews 
• A new methodology to estimate the steady-state permeability of roast and ground coffee in packed beds 
•  Water quality for Espresso coffee
• Suppressing the coffee stain effect: how to control colloidal self-assembly in evaporating drops using electrowetting
• Experimental and modelling: Systematically Improving Espresso: Insights from Mathematical Modeling and Experiment
•  Method comparison: Comparison of espresso coffee brewing techniques 

and even on how coffee grounds affect soil properties

• Sequential effects of spent coffee grounds on soil physical properties - Cervera‐Mata - 2023 - Soil Use and Management - Wiley Online Library 

Check also a short video on evaporation and condensation

 

Coffee hydrology and teaching

Coffee is great to break the ice in online and in class teaching. A nice coffee hydrology question developed, to my knowledge by Prof. emmeritus Allan Rodhe (in case I am wrong let me know) and I use in teaching at Uppsala Uni - BSc course 1TV015  Meteorologi, hydrologi och miljömätmetoder: "Here comes some coffee brewing hydrology" combines Darcy and the massbalance:

The figure below shows a coffee maker. For simplicity, it has a cylindrical filter holder with a horizontal filter at the bottom. All coffee outflow takes place through the filter. During brewing, the water supply from the water heater is 0.11 L min-1, which after a while gives a stationary water level with the figure b = 8.0 cm. When the water heater inflow stops, place your empty cup under the brewer. The cup is cylindrical with the same inner diameter as the filter holder. Filter holder diameter = 6.0 cm and height of the ground coffee a = 5.0 cm. How long does it take to fill the coffee cup with 6.0 cm of coffee?

When the inflow to the brewer ceases, the water level drops, the total potential gradient over the coffee powder decreases and the water flow decreases. Calculate the water level as a function of time and hence the time for a certain lowering of the water level (= the increase of the cup's coffee level).

For solution pass by the next class of 1TV015 😊

After all the writing, I need first a fika with .... 

 * ps. links are indicated in orange

update 20240125

Hello world #2

"Hello world" 

On 04-05-09, everything was new. I started my PhD adventure and hydrodroplets blog to update family, friends and colleagues. In the first years, I posted regularly about different short and longer water experiences. Towards the end of the PhD, with increasing stress levels, the number of posts decreased. 

Once I graduated, I started to explore the microblog Twitter to chirp shorter experiences. The quick and short style allowed me to communicate water-related tweets. At the time of writing, 1100+ tweets. Consequently, the blog posts decreased or got stuck at 100+ old-fashioned blog posts (day of writing). Despite not posting actual blog posts the, hydrodroplets.blogspot.com changed from blogging towards my "web-hub-portfolio" in which 

In time, online media keeps changing rapidly. Twitter changed with new positive and negative vibes to X while new players, e.g., 🧵or Bluesky, appeared. While such microblogs are helpful for rapid chirping, the quantity is not always quality. 

After these years, hydrodroplets.blogspot.com is still around. With the new website online, the plan is to convert hydrodroplets from a "web-hub-portfolio" again to a blog with more frequent, longer posts. 

Time will tell what the future brings, but there are many exciting things to blog and chirp about. Stay tuned...