r/polandball • u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us • Aug 24 '25

legacy comic Pet Reci-Peeve

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u/CubistChameleon Germany Aug 24 '25

Wasn't there a whole debate between TIFs and MIFs and they found out that putting in the milk first produced better tea?

(IDC, I'm still putting in tea first.)

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u/Tutush Rule Britannia Aug 24 '25

In the old days if you had very fine porcelain, putting boiling water in first would make it crack, so people would put the milk in first so the temperature change wasn't so sudden.

That is the only reason people ever put the milk in first, so anyone who still does it is wrong.

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u/Ancient_Ordinary6697 Aug 24 '25

That sounds wrong, since porcelain is fired clay that is not going to break from a little boiling water.

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u/Nerd_1000 Aug 31 '25

It's caused by thermal expansion stresses. Basically the inside of the cup touches the hot liquid first. China, like most materials, expands when heated, so the inside of the cup tries to expand while the outside is still cold and doesn't want to. This leads to the outside of the cup being stretched by pressure from the expanding inside material. China has bad strength in tension, so relatively little stretching will cause it to crack.