between a spoon and a fork, which shape would induce better dissolution and diffusion of sugar into milk/tea/coffee ?
I am wondering about this because
Forks: Their tines (usually 3-4 tines) should theoretically cause more agitation and enable better dissolution and diffusion of sugar with more "churns" while stirring.
Spoons: They act as a shallow bowl and help in serving sugar into the liquid, and can also double up and do the job of mixing it.
Strictly for the purpose of mixing the sugar into the liquid, do spoons have any design advantage over forks if we ignore the aspect that they help in transferring the heap of sugar into liquids ?
Also: the smooth edge of a spoon is less likely to scratch a cup than the teeth of a fork. But probably irrelevant for normal use.
P.S. skilled is basically saying: bigger (spoon / fork / other object) mixes better.
https://www.amazon.com/Pierced-Serving-Spoons/b?node=3672970...
Of course we haven't mentioned the intensity of mixing. A food mixer's blades appear more closer to a fork than a spoon.
The larger surface area of the spoon compared to the tines of a fork means that when a spoon is used for stirring, it moves a greater volume of liquid with each motion. The broader stirring action helps not just in moving the particles around but also in ensuring that sugar is not concentrated in one part of the liquid.
You can also test it yourself with a transparent liquid (green tea), a fork will cause the sugar to be stirred in place at the bottom.
You can generally stir more quickly and chaotically with a fork. Stirring with a spoon will require a slower stir to avoid splashing over the cup edge. This ge really means that when you stir with a spoon you create a vortex concentrating the solute in the bottom center of the cup.
There's a reason bakers use whisks and not spoons for mixing - tines create more mixing actions.
This is considered improper with regards to "table manners". Many people do a circular motion with the spoon moving around the glass/cup wall. This creates a big stable vortex. The mass of the liquid is pushed against the wall and moves as a whole, similar to an annular flow, as you describe.
Another technique, the one I use (which appears to be "considered" proper, but our focus is on efficiency here), is a linear back and forth motion where the spoon moves forward and backward creating four unstable vortices every motion's period (T): two vortices on the left and right of the spoon when it moves forward (T/2), then two vortices on its left and right when it moves backwards (second half period, at date T, for a total of four vortices). These are quickly broken as they collide against one another every half period, and I suppose each particle's trajectory is more irregular with respect to a neighboring particle, which would mean a faster dissolution and a faster change in the concentration gradient.
That's how I've always thought about it. I'm not certain.
I always drink my post training coffee with whey, glycine and creatine monohydrate. The shaker mixes the ingredients quite well.
My thought was on the lines of non turbulent mixing with spoon or fork, entirely on the basis of mixing efficiency.
It's so nice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spork
But also no sugar and no tea/coffee. Energy drinks all the way.