The Mandelbrot in the bean.

As you may have noticed from my last couple of posts, I've been having a lot of fun lately with a new USB microscope. With the ability to look at coffee (and other stuff I guess) magnified 200 times you really get the sense that you are interacting with coffee in a wholly new way. Being able to zoom in (and in and into) the center cut of a green coffee bean and view the silverskin as though it were huge sheets of gigantic crystals is really amazing for someone who looks at green coffee all day long.
There is a staggering amount of information contained in a 200X view; figuring out what that information means is a whole other story. I think that gaining new perspectives into something you interact with everyday can remind you of how little we know/understand about coffee (or anything for that matter). It's exciting to re-realize how far we have to go in our understanding of coffee and that we've barely scratched the surface.

I'll be posting new pics from the microscope on my Fickr (check the Microscope Set)

links:
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