nadsat

The old World of Coca-Cola was one of my favorite attractions in Atlanta. It was the first tourist attraction I ever visited in Atlanta and has always been a place I recommend to visitors. The location in Underground Atlanta offered a good bit of history and some nostalgia but most everyone would agree the ability to taste Coca-Cola products from around the world was the main draw. Coca-Cola decided to raise the bar and just in time for Memorial Day weekend and opened a new World of Coca-Cola. The new facility cost almost $100 million and promises a new level of interaction for its visitors. Fans of the old attraction need not worry though, the ability to fill yourself with as much Coke as you can still exists.

The new World of Coca-Cola is situated right across from the Georgia Aquarium. This location is ideal for visitors that want to check out the Aquarium, Centennial Olympic Park, or the CNN Center without having to drive and re-park. In fact, Atlanta now offers a “city pass” allowing tourists to visit each of the city’s major attractions over the course of nine days for one discounted price. Like the Georgia Aquarium, tickets for The World of Coca-Cola are for a specific time. This helps ease the congestion and made entering and touring the museum a relatively painless process despite the crowded Memorial Day weekend crowd. I would definitely recommend buying in advance online.

As expected, the World of Coca-Cola is little more than one long commercial for Coca-Cola. From the moment you step in the door to when you exit the gift shop, Coca-Cola wages a propaganda war against your senses. If you’re already a Pepsi-hating, Coke lackey like myself this should do nothing but please. However, if you look past the marketing, there is a fair amount of history that is quite interesting. The original Coca-Cola patent is on display as well as various pieces of Andy Warhol’s famous Coke inspired pieces of art. Coca-Cola has been a lot more than a soft drink for a long time now. In fact, one person even described it as “America in a bottle.”

The biggest new attraction is a “4-D” movie/ride called the “Search for the Secret Formula”. This is very similar to some of rides at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fl. You wear 3-D glasses and sit in a motorized chair that will shift, rumble, spray air, water, etc in response to whatever is happening on screen. The movie itself was more pro-Coke propaganda, but like I said you should expect this from the moment you walk in the front door. On that note though, I did not notice anything even mentioning Coke’s biggest rival, Pepsi-Cola. Coca-Cola sells an image and I far prefer this marketing approach to Pepsi’s direct comparison strategy. Pepsi seems far more concerned with talking about why they are better than Coke than anything else.

The coolest new addition when compared to the old museum is the full bottling facility on site. One can watch the workers operate the machinery through a glass window, producing actual 8oz glass bottles of Coca-Cola. These bottles are produced solely for the visitors too. Everyone that goes through the World of Coca-Cola gets to take home one of the bottles produced that very day.

The “Taste of Coca-Cola” is still there and is setup as the last stop on the tour. It allows visitors to taste Coca-Cola products from all around the world. For some reason I remember there being a little more variety at the old museum but I don’t have any numbers in front of me. A new addition is a rotating, tasting “bar” that changes what it serves. It was serving a couple Odwalla products on Saturday which was a surprise since I did not even know Odwalla was owned by Coke. The tasting center was definitely welcome at the end of the tour as I quite thirsty by the end of all of it. In fact, I found myself getting thirstier and thirstier as I went through the museum. Take a wild guess as to what kind of beverage I wanted? That’s right a good ‘ol fashioned Coca-Cola, still my favorite of all the variations available.

The additional attractions, increased size, and of course the “Taste of Coca-Cola” room make The World of Coca-Cola a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon. It took me and a friend a good two hours to go through all of it but I think one could easily spend a lot more time and not be bored.

On a side note, it is worthwhile to mention that all the plastic cups in the tasting room are produced from a renewable source and the actual building is built to LEED standards (United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). This makes the World of Coca-Cola one of the few environmentally sustainable building in Georgia according to Coca-Cola CEO and Chair, Neville Isdell.

The open road, the great American road trip, Gumball Rally, Cannonball Run… what is the obsession with crossing the country in an automobile? I don’t have the answer, I just know I’ve always wanted to do it and now I have. Of course now I want to do it again differently but you’ll have to read on to find out more.

April and I left on a Saturday morning from my current home in Atlanta, GA with a 91 Accord DX loaded down with just about everything she owns that she deemed valuable enough to move with her (furniture was thankfully not coming along for the ride). Note that the DX model is the bare bones, price leader model of the Accord so no cruise control (A/C is included though).

Anyway our route was as follows: take I-20 west out of Atlanta to Birmingham, AL. From there hop on US-78 and follow this northwest through Alabama and Mississippi to Memphis. I-40 is picked up just outside of Memphis, TN and this took us through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and finally into California. We continued on I-40 West until we intersected with I-15 South and rode that until we hit I-10 and this carried us onto Los Angeles.

Something that seems like such a big deal, in the end really wasn’t. We made it there early Monday afternoon with no real problems. We didn’t stop and see any sites which was a shame considering we came within 100 miles of both the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Even crossing the desert was not a huge ordeal. It wasn’t even really a desert in the Road Runner/Wyle Coyote sense until we hit California. I imagine if one took a more southern route things may have been different. Gas stations and places to eat were plentiful which squashed visions of nothingness for hundreds of miles that filled my head before we left.

Despite the convenience of gas stations and fast food restaurants, there was an overwhelming sense of space, not barren space, just space. From the flat farmland in Oklahoma and Arkansas to the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona and even the green rolling hills of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, I really got a sense of how big the United States actually is and there’s a whole northern half of the country that I didn’t cross.

The accord handled itself well be it cruising at 85 or even 90mph in the desert or cutting in and out of traffic in Los Angeles. I enjoy driving though. Yes my rear end and legs were cramped at the end of the day and I was ready to get out of the car, but I was ready to hop right back in it the next morning and push onward. Considering the cost of gas and accommodations, flying would have been cheaper and less time-consuming. Driving is so much more romantic though even if the trip isn’t quite the excursion it used to be. Driving was also necessary because of the amount of luggage and the need for a vehicle in Los Angeles.

The only real surprise on the trip was the variation in quality of the aforementioned accommodations. Our first stop in El Reno, OK (a little city west of Oklahoma City) was disappointing at best. Our room looked straight out of the late 70’s with a thick, absorbent carpet that looked like it had not been cleaned since the late 70’s. Neither of us walked on that carpet in our bare feet. This was for $40/night. Our second stop in Flagstaff, AZ not only cost us less but included a much nicer room, shower, and hosts. If I make the trip again I’m not stopping in El Reno.

And yes, I would make the trip again. Although next time I would try to make a few more stops along the way. It seems like a shame to pass by Las Vegas and not try to win back some gas money.  Cruise control would be nice too.

Tin (chemical symbol Sn) typically is not thought of as a particularly useful metal and neither are its alloys. Tin has largely been replaced by aluminum in the two areas people knew it best, cans and foil. Some still refer to the updated aluminum versions as tin. So is tin used for anything anymore?

First let’s look at some of the properties of tin. Tin has a low melting point, 505 K. For reference, aluminum melts at roughly 933 K and carbon steel at roughly 1800 K. This low melt point is tin’s biggest weakness compared to structural metals but it is also its more important characteristic. Liquid tin does not boil until 2900 K. It also has a very low viscosity and wets the surface of most materials.

Given the characteristics described above it makes sense that most Sn-alloys are used for solders. Tin-lead (Sn-Pb) alloys have historically been solder but more environmentally friendly options such as Sn-Ag-Cu (tin-silver-copper) alloys do exist and are becoming more widespread.

Ok, so solder and foil aren’t that interesting, I know. Remember what I said earlier about tin’s high boiling point and low viscosity? Well, the surface of molten tin is also perfectly flat. Using these properties, molten tin can be used to create large, flat sheets of glass, called “float glass”.

Imagine a continuous river of molten tin, now pour molten glass onto the tin. Tin is a good head conductor and it has a perfectly flat surface so it conducts the heat quickly and uniformly allowing for a perfectly flat piece of glass with a uniform thickness to form on the molten tin surface. Pretty cool, right?

The idea of float glass has been around for awhile but it was not successfully implemented commercially until the 1950s. Sir Alastair Pilkington, a British engineer, gets the credit for the process that is still used to produce about 90% of flat glass today. There are a few other details to the process but the basics of it are pretty simple. Thickness can range from around 0.1″ to 0.6″ so the float glass process can be used for a wide range of large, flat glass panels.

Think about it the next time you go window shopping. How were those large, flat windows manufacturing? Odds are it was using the float glass process.

Over the next month, Nadsat will be moving its base of operations from Atlanta.  As of May 5th I’m a proud Alumnus of The Georgia Institute of Technology.  What’s the next step?  June 18th I begin work at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.  My home however will remain in Georgia, I’ll be in Augusta.

As far as Nadsat is concerned, little should change (well hopefully there will be more updates).   I’ll try to write about things of interest to me and hopefully some of you will find them interesting as well.  For example, expect a post or two relating to metallurgy in the near future.

Thanks for reading.