Edit: Thanks so much for the silver kind stranger!
Edit 2: And the others! You’ve made my day! Glad I dropped my biscuit in my tea and decided I needed answers
In: Chemistry
Everything is made up of molecules. All molecules are vibrating all the time. Hotter things have a faster vibration. Therefore more collisions occur when something is hotter. Therefore adding a hot liquid will break something down quicker than a cold liquid due to the increased amount of collisions and vibrations!
cookies are made of butter and flour. the butter melts and technically most powders like flour dissolvs faster in warm liquid but it is mainly the melting of the butter.
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Why does hot coffee break up a cookie but a hot oven makes them solidify?
Pretty sure it’s not about hotter things moving faster or having more collisions, but that hotter molecules have more *energy*, and things with more energy don’t want to stick to whatever they’re currently stuck to, they want to separate. It’s basically the same way melting works, so you’re kinda “melting” the cookie…that’s about as ELI5 as I can do it without getting into thermodynamics.
With cold liquids you’re mostly dissolving the sugar and flour, with a hot liquid you’re also melting the butter. That coupled with hot things reacting faster makes it all fall apart quickly.
In the words of the great Richard Feynman: Hot liquids have their molecules jiggling more rapidly and can pass that jiggle to the cookie molecules faster and better.
Take 20 kids and put them in a room full of toys and crank the AC down a lot so the kids are cold. Not much happens. They get called and slow down and dont move too much. Turn the heat back to normal and they go back to playing and running around.
Lower temperature = less movement = less physical/chemical reactions.
There are lots of reactions going on. Some need an extra push of energy to happen. Hot liquid, which have a lot of energy, helps these reactions happen faster by giving them the push they need to occur.
Solutes tend to dissolve faster in a warm solvent. So the sugars and various ingredients that are holding the biscuit together dissolve faster hence the biscuit falls apart.
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