They won't see us waving from such great heights

[venta]

A question for those of a scientific turn of mind.

I live in Oxford which, as many of you know, is a hard water area. Our kettle needs regular de-scaling, as it quickly fills up with concrete-y white deposits. I'm sure the iron would too, if we ever used it.

Recently, the shower has been communicating to me that it needs de-scaling; it does this by running extremely hot. This isn't as daft as it sounds: scale lowers the water throughput, and thus the shower is heating much less water than it thinks it is, the net result being that it heats it too much (at least, that's my understanding).

It's always a fight to dismantle the showerhead, but when one does the deposits found therein always turn out to be a virulent shade of jade-green. Why ? Is it in fact not scale, but some mysterious by-product of a disintegrating copper water tank ?

And for those who are not of a scientific turn of mind: what do they call cider in America ?

Comments

[zotz]

I second Jo on the copper, and apple juice is cider in the states while fermented apple juice is hard cider. I noted this again on my recent trip, although I didn't end up drinking any (or much alcoholic at all, actually).

[venta.livejournal.com]

I was talking to a friend at the weekend, who'd had US friends over here who kept buying beer for themselves in pubs, and cider for the baby. They were quite horrified when someone explained it to them.

I had thought the US called cider applejack, but someone told me that that's actually more like apple brandy.

[zotz]

Indeed. Applejack is a distilled spirit more like Calvados.

Quite a mistake, but hopefully there'll be no harm done.