I’m so particular about my tea pots, that once I find one that satisfies my criteria, I will seek it out, halfway across the world. My sturdy tea kettle from McGuckins Hardware store in Boulder, Colorado is like that. I bought it while I was visiting Boulder in 2001 for a Jupiter meeting. Dark blue background, stars on the foreground, whistles just right. Now I’m thinking to replace it because it is getting old, so what did I do? I waited until I was in Boulder again, once more to McGuckins Hardware.. which was last April, and … guess what.. that particular kettle is discontinued. Life is like that sometimes.

Here’s a joke from the standard genre for you:

A Statistician, Engineer and Physicist go to the horse track. Each have their system for betting on the winner and they’re sure of it.

After the race is over, the Statistician wanders into the nearby bar, defeated. He notices the Engineer, sits down next to him, and begins lamenting: “I don’t understand it. I tabulated the recent performance of all these horses, cross-referenced them with trends for others of their breed, considered seasonal variability, everything. I couldn’t have lost.”

“Yeah,” says the Engineer, “well, forget that. I ran simulations based on their weight, mechanical ratios, performance models, everything, and I’m no better off.”

Suddenly, they notice a commotion in the corner. The Physicist is sitting there, buying rounds and counting his winnings. The Engineer and Statistician decide they’ve got to know, so they shuffle over and ask him, “what’s your secret, how’d you do it?”

The Physicist leans back, takes a deep breath, and begins, “Well, first I assumed all the horses were spherical and identical…”

Do you ever miss electric kettles, despite their ugliness? We have a Brita kettle, one that I am rather fond of since it de-scums the hard London tap water.

I use a old-fashioned kettle (I was going to say “normal kettle” but that’s so geographically subjective!) when in the US. In fact, I once did just as you hinted at and dangerously left it on the burner for hours. It was an el cheapo alumin[i]um kettle on an electric burner: all the water boiled out and it ended up fusing itself to the stovetop element. It remained stuck there until I was moving and my dad chiseled it off the burner. He was rather amazed by it, actually, since when he pulled it off, there was a distinct spiral impression molded into the bottom of the kettle. Spectacular ineptness in the kitchen, those days — I couldn’t even boil water!

Thanks, too, for the referrals to “Female Science Professor” and “On Being a Scientist and a Woman.” These are insight filled essays. May the wind be at their backs. These are sites that I intend to continue to read and tell others about.

Cheers.

“I love how you fret about the physics and decide on aesthetics in the end.”

It is not clear that these two were as separate as I thought, in this case. In many cases, they are often all nicely mixed up….

-cvj

I also have a Chantal kettle, for the obvious reason. No physics involved either.

I have switched to All Clad over the years, as the enamel on my Chantal posts would chip. But I disagree — All Clad is for dog people too!