Miscellaneous desk
< March 20	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 21

Heating tea in the microwave oven

My girlfriend saves time when heating her tea by heating it in the microwave oven instead of a coffee machine. I understand the time saving thing, but when I have tried it myself, the thing for me is that the microwave oven also heats the cup itself as well as the water in it, making sipping the tea impossible until I wait a while for the cup to cool down. One way to get around this that I have used is to pour the tea into a separate cup after heating, but this requires using two cups every time. Is there an easier way? JIP | Talk 00:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Does the tea need to be in the cup you're heating? Could you just heat the water and then pour it into a cup which already contains the tea? If so, you could use the initial cup many times. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:00, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Buy a microwave safe cup? Clarityfiend (talk) 07:32, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A different cup, not necessarily explicitly "microwave safe", might not heat up so much. I usually make my coffee, tea, instant soup etc. in half-pint glass tankards (of which I have a plethora, having been involved in many beer festivals). Although I usually use an electric kettle to heat the water, assuming this to be the more energy efficient method) sometimes the nature of the drink being made, or it having been left and gone cold before drinking and needing re-heating, dictates that I too use a microwave, and I don't find that the tankards heat up excessively. Experiment (with due caution)!

Incidentally, if time is of the essence, do you make sure to put only the minimum necessary amount of water into the kettle? Any extra water heated and then not immediately used both extends the time-to-boil and wastes energy. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.219.35.136 (talk) 08:56, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed - get an electric kettle. Alansplodge (talk) 13:52, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A microwave will boil a single cup of water significantly faster than a kettle will, if you live in a place where the electricity is only 120 volts. Brits forget this. (Also, most Americans don't want to throw away money on a teakettle either; why would they, when a microwave is faster and doesn't take up extra counter space?) --24.76.103.169 (talk) 02:59, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's a terrible idea. See this article from Slate: [1]. --Viennese Waltz 12:21, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it all depends on what @JIP: means by "tea". If the stuff made from the fermented and dried leaves of Camellia sinensis that is traditionally associated with hot buttered crumpets, cricket, and vicars, then a proper kettle is the only way to go. If, on the other hand, he means any of the other things that masquerade as tea but are in fact made from weeds and leaves from hedgerows, then it probably doesn't matter much one way or the other. DuncanHill (talk) 13:15, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Car won't start

Not an emergency. I'm visiting family and one of them didn't close the passenger door all the way a couple days ago, and I think that may have left the dome light on and drained the battery. When I try to start the car, some lights on the dash light up and I hear a click. I jumped the battery from another car and let the other car run for a few minutes, but that didn't change anything: no rrr-rrr-rrr as the motor tries to turn over, but just a click. So maybe it's not the battery after all. Another possibility, though, is that the jumper clamps didn't make good contact. My cables are pretty cheap and barely long enough to reach between the two cars (batteries on opposite sides, can't easily rearrange the cars because of the parking spot).

Unfortunately, I don't have a voltmeter here. It was daytime when I tried this but now that it's dark, I can go out and see if the headlights come on at normal brightness and what the dash indicators were. In the orst case scenario I can call a service truck tomorrow, but I'd rather deal with this myself. Any advice? Thanks. 2601:648:8200:970:0:0:0:1A5F (talk) 03:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A quick way to check the power is to put the key in to the aux position and try the radio. That will burn less juice than trying to flip the lights on. Try jumping again, and you should see a spark as you complete the connection. Then try to start it. If it still fails, it could be the battery, the starter, or the alternator. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:06, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming the battery was drained, jump starting from another car will get your engine running but will not recharge your battery to any useful extent. You need to get running and then drive your car for at least 40 continuous miles, preferably avoiding any non-essential battery use (radio, heater, aircon, lights, wipers, etc.), so that the alternator can recharge your battery, before you switch off your engine again.

Covid-dictated low use combined with cold weather have flattened my battery a few times in the last several months. I use a mains plug-in propriety battery charger (240V – I'm in the UK), which generally has to run for 10-12 hours on low charge) before the battery is properly recharged.

It's also possible (as Bugs says) that your starter motor has failed: this happened to me once when parked at a festival I was helping to run, and the symptoms are similar, so you'll only find out if you properly recharge your battery and still can't start. Alternator failure is another possibility, although in that case I would have expected you to notice sub-critical problems before the final failure. Hope this helps. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.219.35.136 (talk) 09:20, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with the starter motor failure; it happened to me a couple of years ago, with those symptoms. Alansplodge (talk) 13:50, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, there is definitely (some) power in the car, enough to light the dash indicators and sound the warning beep when I turn the key without my seat belt on, so likely enough to run the radio too, though maybe not enough to make the starter motor stir. I didn't make it outside last night to check the headlamp brightness.

I remember noticing no spark when I connected the jumper cables, so they may have made a poor connection to one or both batteries. I'll see if I can move the cars around today to get them closer. Not sure what to do about the jumper to battery connection: there are clamp connectors on the batteries and I put the alligator clips around the connectors, but they may not be all that conductive. I hope the starter motor has not failed since getting that fixed sounds expensive. I don't have enough tools these days to do it myself.

Hmm, if it is starter motor failure, maybe I can push start the car (it is a stick shift). 2601:648:8200:970:0:0:0:1A5F (talk) 19:06, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Update: push starting failed, but another jump start attempt (this time with a second person who could rev the donor car a little before the jump) got it started, so it is working now. I haven't driven 45 miles yet but have run the motor about 1/2 hour mostly idle, and was able to restart it after a stall, so I think everything is cool now. Thanks for all the help. 2601:648:8200:970:0:0:0:1A5F (talk) 01:57, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent. How old is the battery? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:34, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Good question. It's not ancient but it might be 3+ years. I'll have to see if I can find the receipt or ask the shop to check its records (I got it installed there so it is part of their service record for the car). I think it had a 5 year warranty though how that usually works is if it fails after 3 years, you get 40% credit. New batteries seem to have gotten ridiculously expensive too, I don't know why. But if it's time for one, I guess I'll survive. I might buy a deep discharge battery this time, since my past few battery failures have happened due to unintentional discharge such as letting the car sit idle for too long. Thanks for bringing this up. 2601:648:8200:970:0:0:0:1A5F (talk) 06:22, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What species were Zeus' oaks?

What species were Zeus' sacred oaks at Dodona? Mostly I'm finding them as either Quercus macrolepis or Quercus ilex. I guess it might be impossible to narrow this down to just the one species? Ericoides (talk) 08:21, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Ancient Greek name for the tree species, used in Sophocles' Women of Trachis, was φηγός (phēgós), which LSJ identifies with Quercus aegilops, an older name for Quercus macrolepis. The Ancient Greek word for Quercus ilex was πρῖνος (prînos). A second mention in Women of Trachis uses the term δρῦς (drûs), which can refer to either species. These mentions refer to one specific individual, the tree later uprooted by Theodosius. I don't know if there is reason to assume that the oaks in the grove were monospecific. --Lambiam 09:43, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That's extremely useful info. Ericoides (talk) 10:26, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]