Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Sell Granular Goods By The Unit

Contents: 50,000 Grade A Sugar Granules
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To make you feel like you're getting more. Instead of a pound of sugar, you're getting like, 50,000 of these things that look like fine diamonds. Use this marketing angle to give a better view of the product too. Show just one big sugar grain on the bag zoomed in with a microscope, but lit to look absolutely delicious.

On the back have pictures of other competing grains appropriately lit to resemble a crime scene. Eww, looks like a dog turd. You wanna put that in your baby's whisky milk?

Works great for Coffee, "Contains 20,000 premium coffee bean granules". Flour "100,000 imported fine flour... uh...bits."

Yup. That would be something you could do.

doctorremulac3, Apr 09 2012

my slant on something like this! Name-A-Grain
[xandram, Apr 10 2012]

Sugar diamonds http://www.beryls.c...fo&products_id=7591
[ldischler, Apr 11 2012]

More sugar gemstones http://www.globalsu...s%20&%20Decorations
[ldischler, Apr 11 2012]

measuring cup http://imgur.com/a/uysuC
I'll just leave this here. [Voice, Aug 15 2013]

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       You do know that manufacturers would just shrink granule size rather than increase per/unit price and pass the extra production costs on to the customer, right?   

       "I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2,000 of something." — Mitch Hedberg
ytk, Apr 09 2012
  

       Good way to reduce cost cutting in the flour grinding process. I predict a race for ever finer grains: "The absolute finest flour you will ever find: $5 for 6x10^23 particles. Anything finer isn't flour!"
scad mientist, Apr 09 2012
  

       There you go, twice for the price.
doctorremulac3, Apr 09 2012
  

       So you'd sell flour by the mole?
ytk, Apr 09 2012
  

       You can't have a mole of flour. Didn't we (humanity) work through this, with the whole 'atom of cheese' thing?   

       (Unless you meant an Avogadro's number of flour particles, but that's (a) a slight misuse of the word 'mole', and (b) a lot of flour. Flour delivered by burrowing mammals is another story.)
spidermother, Apr 09 2012
  

       Sure you can. The 'pedia defines a mole as:   

       //an amount of a substance that contains as many elementary entities (e.g., atoms, molecules, ions, electrons) as there are atoms in 12 grams of pure carbon-12//   

       So according to this definition, you can have a mole of anything that can't be further subdivided. Atoms, molecules, Volkswagens, you name it. There must be some elemental entity of flour, past which point further subdivisions result in something no longer considered flour. Hence the slogan: //Anything finer isn't flour!//
ytk, Apr 09 2012
  

       I like that.   

       Let's put some excitement back in dry goods. Flour's lost some of it's sexiness in the past few decades.
doctorremulac3, Apr 09 2012
  

       Interestingly (or not), the concentration of humans , taken over the volume of the Earth, is 10^-38M.
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 09 2012
  

       If the 'pedia told you to jump off a cliff... //There must be some elemental entity of flour, past which point further subdivisions result in something no longer considered flour.// That's a nonsense argument, and about 2000 years out of date. There are no elemental entities of flour. Sure, there are particle sizes so small that no-one would call them flour, but there is no non-arbitrary dividing line, such as there is with atoms and molecules.   

       Nonetheless, thanks for another interesting thing to argue about. All is grist for the mill.
spidermother, Apr 09 2012
  

       //There are no elemental entities of flour. Sure, there are particle sizes so small that no-one would call them flour//   

       Take a single particle of flour. Can you subdivide it, and if so is at least one of those parts capable of being described as flour? If yes, do so and repeat. If not, you have an elementary (which is the word I should have used above, rather than "elemental") entity of flour, incapable of further subdivision.   

       Another example: Let's posit the existence a substance called "spidermother's milk", or "smilk" for short. Smilk is defined to be a solution with a ratio of precisely 10 H2O molecules to 1 NaCl molecule. While it may be physically possible to split NaCl, such that you could have 5 H2O molecules and 1 atom of pure sodium, this would no longer be smilk under the definition. So, the elementary entity of smilk is a solution of 10 H2O molecules and 1 NaCl molecule, and you can define a mole of smilk in terms of this entity.   

       Flour must be the same way. There is some point where you can no longer remove any given component in any quantity from the mixture and still have flour. That is the elementary entity of flour; anything less than that simply isn't flour.
ytk, Apr 10 2012
  

       //If the 'pedia told you to jump off a cliff// [ytk]'s is also the definition of "mole" I learned: a word like "dozen," or "score."   

       But, to avoid confusion with a mole of atoms, we should have a different word for 6.02e23 grains of flour. Mühle, maybe.   

       //If yes, do so and repeat. If not, you have an elementary entity// This is just the "how many grains of sand make a heap" conundrum in reverse.   

       By the way, the Wikipedia agrees with the OED -- suspiciously well in fact: looks like cut/paste with a little light editing.
mouseposture, Apr 10 2012
  

       Well, you could spell it out, as I did above - 'an Avogadro's number of flour particles' (or even 'a mole of flour particles') is less offensive (to me) than 'a mole of flour'. To use the word 'mole' you must be referring to discrete things, such as molecules. Not to make a meal of the issue, but I don't thing there's any meaningful way of defining an elementary unit of flour. The smilk example is fine, but it doesn't carry over to a substance with an indefinite composition, and complex metastructure (i.e. a structure that cannot be precisely described at the molecular level alone).
spidermother, Apr 10 2012
  

       //I don't thing there's any meaningful way of defining an elementary unit of flour//   

       Then maybe it's the Potter Stewart test: "I can't define it, but I know it when I bake with it."
ytk, Apr 10 2012
  

       The particle size of fine ground flour is about 0.1 mm.* The volume of one particle is thus 10^-12 m^3. So a mole of such particles would occupy a volume 10^-12 m^3 x 6 10^23 = 6 x 10^11 m^3. That is a cube of flour nearly 10^4 m on a side, a scary prospect.   

       * Source: The Effect of Particle Size of Whole-Grain Flour on Plasma Glucose, Insulin, Glucagon and Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone in Humans, Kay M. Behall, PhD, Daniel J. Scholfield, BS and Judith Hallfrisch, PhD; J Am Coll Nutr December 1999 vol. 18 no. 6 591-597
sqeaketh the wheel, Apr 10 2012
  

       So, adding about 400 moles of cornstarch particles to the Mediterranean should make it possible to walk from Italy to Sicily to Tunisia, if you were to keep moving at a brisk pace.
UnaBubba, Apr 10 2012
  

       [UnaBubba]   

       *blinks*
ytk, Apr 10 2012
  

       I was thinking just now that this place might be in decline because you'd gone, [UB]. I feel we should now perform some kind of prodigal son ceremony now.   

       But anyway: i see the word "mole" as akin to a word like "last" or "dozen": a name for a cardinal number outside the usual number system. Even if it isn't, thinking of it that way makes it easier to learn.   

       In some circumstances, reducing the size of a particle would increase its value. A buckyball is more useful for many purposes than powdered graphite and smaller grains of sugar or salt would dissolve more quickly.
nineteenthly, Apr 10 2012
  

       Ubie!!
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 10 2012
  

       //reducing the size of a particle would increase its value//   

       Shades of The Third Policeman....
not_morrison_rm, Apr 10 2012
  

       Bring on the powder market.
imagin8or, Apr 10 2012
  

       // [UnaBubba] //   

       "SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS, DEFLECTORS TO MAXIMUM ! "
8th of 7, Apr 10 2012
  

       Resistance is futile, [8th].
UnaBubba, Apr 10 2012
  

       So, [Ubie], uh, hello. Welcome back, even already.
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 10 2012
  

       // Welcome back //   

       You're quite mad, aren't you ...?   

       "That is not dead which can eternal lie ..."   

       Now all we need is [Dub] to welcome the return of our tentacled, slimy other-worldly adversary ...
8th of 7, Apr 10 2012
  

       //You're quite mad, aren't you ...? //   

       Mad? I'm livid! I bet [bigsleep] your best tea service that [Ubie] wouldn't be back in 2012. Speaking of which, no point wasting postage - can you just mail it directly to him?
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 10 2012
  

       Oh, you get that one too ?
8th of 7, Apr 10 2012
  

       Strange weather, Mayan calendars that look like Oreos, and now the return of [UB]. This might be the year that the Lions win the NFC conference.   

       Eh, nah. Some things simply fall too far outside of the standard physics model, even for Vernon to consider.   

       Welcome back, sir.
RayfordSteele, Apr 11 2012
  

       // Welcome back //   

       <incoherent enraged spluttering>
8th of 7, Apr 11 2012
  

       "I'd like a rice, please - I'm making a risottus."
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 11 2012
  

       That was a risottus sardonicus.   

       A shipping container would hold about 2.5 femtomoles of rice.
mouseposture, Apr 11 2012
  

       //these things that look like fine diamonds.//   

       Sell them by the carat. Carats sound more expensive than granules. In fact, why not sell sugar crystals that look like brilliant-cut stones?
ldischler, Apr 11 2012
  

       Probably because sugar doesn't crystallise into 58- faceted shapes?   

       The "crystals" would have to be moulded to shape or cut to shape. Neither seems economically feasible to do, with a bulk commodity consumed in the quantities in which we use sugar, internationally.
UnaBubba, Apr 11 2012
  

       //Neither seems economically feasible to do//   

       Look at the link.
ldischler, Apr 11 2012
  

       I get that it's possible. No problem with that.   

       However, world sugar consumption is approximately 170 million metric tons per annum. That's a bloody lot of nearsighted Indian child labourers, beavering away in sweatshops to make sugar into "gemstones" so it can be eaten by fat Westerners by the shovelful.
UnaBubba, Apr 11 2012
  


 

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