Depends on the exact composition but most lavas are going to be way more viscous than honey.
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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Does "very thick" mean nothing to you?
So... Treacle?
Ohh, wow, you solved a long-standing mystery to me! I've been listening to a lot of discworld novels and could not figure out what "treacle mine road" was supposed to translate to. Now that I know the spelling I could finally look it up. Thanks! ❤️
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You can eat anything once. If your brave enough.
When does something count as being eaten - once you swallow it? I don't think you'd succeed at that with lava.
You'd be able to taste it which I think would fulfill the requirements of knowing its texture.
People who eat the Carolina reaper prove that this is both not a deterrent, and may in fact be the point. On the other hand I've never heard any of them talk about the texture afterward. So maybe the burning is too distracting.
As someone who's eaten many sauces and spice blends that incorporate Carolina reaper peppers, spiciness isn't the same as temperature with regard to heat. Lava's heat is physically destructive and one's tongue would likely be immediately burned beyond recognition. One wouldn't have time to assess the "taste" or texture at all before writhing in agony from severe burns.
In contrast, I can eat a hot sauce made from super hot peppers and, while I'm in agony from the extremely potent capsaicin in the peppers, I haven't damaged my tongue in the process so I can actually taste the flavor and detect the texture of the food.
pretty sure the taste buds die before they can send their report to the brain.
Just shove an insulated hose through your esophagus and out your bunhole and pass lava through it
Holy mackerel
Silicon coated fiberglass should work. Just make sure the cuts are clean or you’re gonna get itchy.
In fact, lava is so nutritious it will fill you up for the rest of your life!
I've had it in cake form. Pretty good.
I choose to believe you're taking about having pica, not eating a molten chocolate cake.
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The viscosity of most lava is about that of ketchup, roughly 10,000 to 100,000 times that of water
Alright so I got curious. For the non people-who-know-what-viscosity-is-measured-in people out there, viscosity is measured in centipoise, which is 1/100 poise. Water is 1 centipoise, hence why we use centipoise over poise. Don't ask me any more than that because I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Lava is anywhere between 10,000 - 1,000,000 cP. According to this chart, there are many edible things that fall within that viscosity. Now lava is very hot, so if we're going to simulate the experience of eating lava in a safe way with edible ingredients, we need something that is that viscous at high temperatures. This page (PDF warning) says that 140f (60c) is the highest temp food can be without burning you immediately.
There isn't much on the above chart that is both edible and has its viscosity measured around those temps. The most promising one was chocolate, which is about 25,000 cP. But it doesn't have a temperature listed. According to lived experience and my ass, melted chocolate has a pretty consistent viscosity at various temperatures, making it a suitable stand in for molten lava.
However, viscosity isn't the end all be all of a lava eating experience. Lava is rocks and rocks are dense. Lava also looks like it would be sticky. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything on the chart that matches the density of lava that is still edible (2600-2800 kg/m^3 for those who were curious). And there is also no unit of measurement for stickiness. But google tells me that some lava is sticky like peanut butter. So our edible lava needs to be considerably dense (thus, chewy) and sticky.
With these things in mind (viscosity, chewiness, and stickiness), I think the best edible stand ins for molten lava would be hot peanut butter (250,000 cP), with honorable mentions being rice pudding (10,000 cP @100C), and hot toothpaste (70,000 cP @40C). Color them bright orange and maybe throw in some Carolina reaper for authenticity and baby you've got some edible lava going
hot orange toothpaste with carolina reaper? michelin star
mount stHelens star
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That seems suspiciously low viscosity. When we see lava running down a volcano it's already cooling down, and is much more viscous. I think that's the image OP has in mind when thinking of honey. Lava with the viscosity of warm chocolate would be lava fresh out of a volcano.
If we use hot peppers to stimulate the nerve endings sensitive to "hot", then we can probably cool down the chocolate such that it has the desired viscosity.
Melted hot pepper chocolate with orange coloring, that would sell!
Yes I would like two please
well check how many things on that list are 1M cP
Delicious comment
now is that kinematic or dynamic viscosity?
Idk. I'm an EMT with two semesters of community college under my belt lol. I was just googling and correlating things that I have no practical knowledge of
And it’s quite heavy, being rock and all. So imagine very weighty honey.
Yeah. You know all those is movies and stuff where people sink in lava?
Nope. It's too dense. You'd be so buoyant you'd just stay on top.
Hey, asshole, don't you tell me how dense I am, I'm an AMERICAN
jumps into lava for freedom and sinks
Who you calling buoyant?
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Ice is a mineral. Thus, water is lava. Hence, you eat lava every day, and it is not the texture of thick honey. QED.
Gate to be the party pooper but lava is specifically molten rock, and rock is a mixture of multiple minerals. As single mineral is not rock. (As far as a quick Google is verifying, open to correction by an expert)
Does Hank Green count?
Furthermore, by your definition of rock, basically all crystals are not rocks. Quartz is a single mineral. It is also considered a rock. As are all other gemstones which are a single mineral. If you think impurities count then again water counts because it has minerals like fluoride and carbonate and halite (salt) in it.
Now one could make the argument that lava is specifically molten rock extruded from beneath the surface of a terrestrial planetary body to its surface. In which case, water on earth doesn’t typically fit that description unless it’s like melted permafrost that melted before getting drawn to the surface or something.
However, on a very cold terrestrial planetary body which was comprised partly of ice, thermal vents / volcanoes would produce water and it would fit the definition of lava. Water is certainly lava in that context.
Considering that physics is assumed consistent across the universe, water viscosity would have the same range regardless of where in the universe it was. Ergo, the water you drink may not be earth lava but it is the exact same viscosity as the water that is lava.
So you still know what the mouthfeel of lava is even if you’ve never ingested any “real” lava.
Sidenote, if you really do want to figure out how silicate lava feels, you could probably find the dynamic viscosity of a certain lava flow and then create caramel under the right conditions to get approximately the same viscosity. Eating butter and sugar might not be healthy but it definitely is less immediately damaging than pouring 700°C fluids into your mouth.
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Saltwater it is!
Conclusion: mineral water is lava
Lava is rocks. Liquid rocks is still rocks.
Yeah but salt is rocks and that stuff is delicious
Yeah, but since it's a liquid it doesn't have the texture of solid rock.
mmm forbidden spicy honey
You absolutely can eat lava... Once
I dunno, eating implies swallowing, I'm not convinced you could definitely get there.
'a'ā or pāhoehoe?
It's gotta be pahoehoe (the one that looks like honey being stirred)
'a'ā looks like it would fizz like pop rocks.
Imagine the terminology if instead of it coming from the study of the Hawaiian volcano system, it came from the Icelandic one.
Then we'd be memorizing words like herliaphongoffjlyur.
Some kinds would be foamy, so like very thick cake batter.
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