[Physics] Best way to move teaspoon to dissolve sugar in a cup of tea

experimental-physicsfluid dynamicsthermodynamics

I know that there is asked questions about something like cooling down cope of coffee..etc, but this one is little different.

My friend was watching TV program of English eating etiquette, and they mentioned that it will be faster to move teaspoon back and forth in a line instead of in a circular way (what we doing usually) will force sugar to dissolve much faster!

But I'm very suspicious with that, and my argument taken from my observation that all of the mixers I saw in industrial level was moving in a circular way, and I believe that they optimized their productivity as much as possible.

So is there any physical reasons that explains which motion will produce the best vortexes for sugar dissolving?

Best Answer

Dissolving depends on several parameters, one of them is the amount of matter already dissolved in the medium. You can't dissolve any amount of sugar in a cup of tea, at some point it stops dissolving.

When circling, the stuff moves all the time pretty the same path thus you don't mix sugar and water too much comparing to each other, they move the same direction because of inertia. Thus the concentration of sugar in some parts of water may be higher and sugar dissolves slower.

In back-and-forth "style", you always change the direction the particles move and thus you mix them more effectively, so you can't have areas where sugar is more concentrated. Which means it should dissolve faster.

That's my assumption :)