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1)“El Museo del café de Trieste”
y las etapas sobresalientes (>>)
2) Science in kitchen:
backing and conservation of food (>>)
Prof.ssa Ernesta De Masi
“El Museo del café de Trieste” y las etapas sobresalientes
Photo by Giovanni Vidmar
Los locales de exposición se hallan en la Torre del Lloyd (via von Bruck, 3 – zona Campi Elisi - Trieste), en el antiguo portal del arsenal austrohúngaro. Actualmente el primer núcleo se encuentra junto a otro espacio dedicado a objetos referentes al puerto.
El proyecto del museo hunde sus raíces en la historia. Ideado a finales del siglo XIX, tomó cuerpo en 1906 como “Museo Comercial”. Después experimentó una serie de modificaciones en el nombre, los contenidos, la estructura y la sede. Originariamente, por deseo de la Cámara de Comercio de Trieste y el Ayuntamiento de Trieste, fue ubicado en el amplio salón de la antigua Bolsa, actualmente sede cameral. En aquel primer momento, el museo contenía muestras, mercancías y objetos relacionados con mercaderías de lo más variadas, entre las que el café ocupaba el lugar de mayor relieve. En la segunda mitad del siglo XX fue trasladado a una zona universitaria nueva. Posteriormente, a fines de los años setenta, la institución cayó en el olvido y en poco tiempo se esfumó su recuerdo.
A continuación se indican los momentos más destacados del “Museo del café de Trieste”:
En 1817 surge la Academia Real de Comercio, precursora de la Escuela Superior de Comercio de la Fundación Revoltella (año 1868), precedente inmediato de la actual facultad de Economía y Comercio. En la Escuela Superior de Comercio existía ya una muestra elemental de las más diversas mercancías.
En 1903 la Cámara de Comercio de Trieste adquiere el Laboratorio de análisis químico, que había sido puesto en funcionamiento y pertenecía al profesor Giulio Morpurgo, al que nombra director de la institución pública. Morpurgo recibe asimismo el mandato de establecer un museo perteneciente al ente público.
En 1906, en el antiguo palacio de la Bolsa, situado en la plaza triestina que lleva ese mismo nombre, halla acomodo el Museo Comercial.
En 1927 toma el nombre de Museo de las Mercaderías, del que es nombrado máximo responsable el profesor Domenico Costa.
En 1945, una transformación más: el organismo cambia de lugar y nombre. Emplazado en el nuevo palacio de química aplicada, en el área universitaria nueva, y con la denominación de Museo Tecnológico, funciona hasta finales de los años setenta del siglo pasado. Después desaparece.
En marzo de 2001 se interesa por el mismo otra importante institución pública, la Autoridad Portuaria de Trieste, que aprueba alojar en la Torre del Lloyd, sede de la presidencia y la dirección del ente, un primer núcleo expositivo del “Museo del café de Trieste”. Gianni Pistrini, periodista competente y experto técnico catador de café, es nombrado máximo responsable del museo.
Actualmente el objetivo es establecer una estructura significativa y permanente con el cometido de transmitir a las generaciones venideras lo que es y, sobre todo, lo que ha sido el puerto de Trieste en relación con el transporte del grano verde.
Para visitar el museo, sírvanse ponerse en contacto con su máximo responsable, Gianni Pistrini, a través de correo electrónico: pistrinig@hotmail.com
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Science in kitchen:
Preface
The kitchen is certainly for a student an interesting place to be explored. We used in the laboratory, for the most activities, the kitchen tools, allowing the scientific exploration of daily phenomena: a such approach to the study of science turns out motivating and exciting.
The teachers team, working on the project, devised a lot of experiments that, coming from the ideas of common sense of the pupils, bring them to the construction of meaningful scientific knowledge as the temperature concept, the energy transfer, the efficiency of thermal machines, the chemical transformations of the foods.
The project involves many subjects:
· Physics: measurement of the efficiency of the moka (coffee machine), the operating curve of a pressure cooker, measurement of the wavelength in the microwave oven, making the ice cream using liquid nitrogen
· Biochemistry: composition of the foods and they transformations
· History: researches on typical foods and traditional process in the conservation and the baking.
The proposed experiments, qualitative and quantitative, carried out in laboratory but also in classroom or at home, privilege the amusing aspect and the method of learning by discovery with a strong involvement of the perceptive and emotional aspects.
Cooking system …
From microwave oven to interferometer measurement
The magnetron is the microwaves generator and trough a wave guide they are sent to the baking chamber. The sidewalls of the baking chamber reflect the microwaves so to have an uniform distribution on the food. A rotary dish is used to improve this uniformity. The result from the interaction between the food molecules and the microwaves is the heating of the food and the following increase of temperature.
Baking chamber
1. Wave guide
2. Magnetron
3. Rotare dish
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Wave length measurement Cooking cheese without rotary dish. |
With a microwave interferometer we can do interesting optical experiments.
… over the tradition
Induction cooking: no flame
Heating is from eddy current generated in the bottom plate of the pot by magnetic induction.
Induction cooker parts
1 Bottom plate
2 Pyroceram
3 Elettromagnetic field
4 Converter
5 Coil for induction
6 Power supply
7 Control switch
As the heating resistances, the coils are assembled under the cooker plate.
To prepare a scientific coffee
How the moka, coffee machine, is made
| Lower water tank with relief valve |
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| The funnel has to be filled by coffee powder |
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| Upper tank and in the centre is a pipe opened on the top |
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| On the top of lower tank there is a filter sustained by a rubber gasket |
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How it works
When we put the coffee machine on the hot plate, the heat supplied from a power source warms the tank and the water.
The steam coming from the heating of the water increases the pressure in the lower tank. This pressure push on the water going up trough the little pipe under the filter where is the powder coffee. Finally it arrives in the upper tank, as the famous drink.
The safety valve, installed on the lower tank, is to limit the maximum pressure at a value less than the cracking pressure. For instance, it can happen in the case of high pressing of the coffee powder. |
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The experiment
We calculated efficiency of the moka that we can consider a thermal machine because there is a conversion from thermal energy to mechanical energy.
We define the efficiency in this application as the ratio between the useful energy and the supplied energy to the machine to produce the drink:
η = Eu / Es
The useful energy is of two terms:
1. the potential energy variation when water goes up from the lower tank to the upper tank
2. the thermal energy because (we drink the hot coffee).
The supplied energy Es is of four terms:
1. Heat supplied to the water inside the lower tank to raise the temperature to the working value.
2. Work to the friction when the water cross trough the coffee powder.
3. The heat to produce the vapour raising the pressure that rises he water
4. The heat to warm the moka
To do the measurement, we installed in the lower tank of the moka, the probe temperature and the pressure transducer.
We weighed the water inside the lower tank, the quantity of the coffee produced and its temperature. We measure besides the distance B1B2 between the centroid of lower tank and the top of the pipe in theupper tank.
Conservation with the heat
The enzymes and the micro organisms are much sensitive to the heat, therefore one of the most effective methods in order to extend the duration of the food is the high temperatures treatment. The enzymes are deactivated in a few minutes in a range of temperature between the 50–80 °C, because they are constituted from proteins denaturating to these temperatures.
The micro organisms are particularly sensitive to the warm wet conditions, that facilitates the coagulation of proteins. Most resistant are the spores, like the Clostridium botulinum (the botulino) resisting to warm wet conditions up to 20 minutes at 120 °C, while the most of the vegetative shapes die at 60 –70 °C. The chemical composition, but over all the low PH, influences very much the heat resistance of the micro organisms. The acid food, with pH less than 4.5, prevents the development of the organisms spores (like the anthrax and the botulino), and needs therefore of treatments much lighter, because the other sources of contamination are less resistant, as you can see on the following table where it is written the Thermal Dead Time: that is the time necessary to kill a micro organism at a certain temperature.
MICROORGANISMS |
MINUTES |
DEGEES CELSIUS |
Salmonella typhosa |
4,3 |
60 |
Staphilococcus aureua |
18,8 |
60 |
Escherichia coli |
20-30 |
57 |
Streptococcus thermophilus |
15 |
70-75 |
Lactobacillus bulgaricus |
30 |
71 |
SPORE DI: |
Bacillus anthracis |
1,7 |
100 |
Bacillus subtilis |
15-20 |
100 |
Clostridium botulinum |
100-330 |
100 |
Clostridium calidotolerans |
520 |
100 |
Conservation with the cold
The low temperatures is important to conserve longer the food because slows down the chemical and enzymatic reactions. The cold slows down, until arresting, the enzymatic activity but not deactives the enzymes acquiring their property when the temperature increases. Because of the slowing down of the enzymatic activity, also the development of the microbes is slowed down: at -18 °C it can be considered null.
The most of the microbes is not killed from the cold. The food conserved with the cold, therefore, must have two important characteristics:
- they must be very cleaned from the hygienic point of view;
- they mustn’t have change of temperature during the conservation
Ice cream by liquid nitrogen
The boiling point of nitrogen, at 760 mmHg, is -196°C and for that it is possible to make ice cream by liquid nitrogen.
Pouring it on mixed ingredients of ice cream, these become solid very fast because they exchange an high quantity of heat for high temperature difference.
The pressure in the kitchen
Pressure cooker
How it is made
The pot is cylindrical vessel closed by an hermetic cover.
There are two valves: the working valve is to have constant pressure ejecting the steam in excess, the safety valve is opened to avoid the burst if the working valve doesn’t work for failure.
How it works
The boiling point of the water, on the sea level, then at 760 mmHg, is 100°C.
During the boiling process, the water temperature is constant. The heat exchanged is only to have the water vaporization but it doesn’t increase the temperature.
If there is hermetic seal, the pressure inside the pot can increase as the temperature in order to the saturation curve.
In the pot, the water begins to boil when the working valve is opened from the vapour pressure of the water being inside.
In this condition the pressure cannot further increase and for that not even the temperature.
The experiment
The working valve is a gravity valve, then we can calculate the pressure weighing the little piston and measuring its section, the temperature is measured by a thermometer. The result agrees to the saturation curve
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