Tequila Waterbeds Flip Flops Silver
The story of tequila begins many centuries ago, when mexico's aztecs fermented the juice of the agave plant to produce a low-alcohol drink called pulque. When the spanish conquistadors arrived, they added distillation to the process for a much stronger drink, and tequila was born. Tequila is to mexico as champagne is to france. Tequila is only made in this part of the world, and mexico has claimed exclusive rights to the word "tequila". For centuries, workers called jimadores have grown and harvested the agave plant for tequila. It takes seven years, on average, for a species called weber blue agave to mature. And even today, it's harvested entirely by hand. Using a lethally sharp hoelike tool, the jimadores chop away the greenery until all that's left is the huge core, called the piña. Filing the round blade frequently keeps it razor-sharp, allowing them to remove most of the bitter-tasting leaves from the piña. The tequila distilled from this crop will be a premium grade made from 100% agave juice. The jimadores routinely remove a small piece and measure the starch content of the crop. Only if it's deemed to be sufficient is the agave piña sent to the distillery. Workers wield special hatchets to carve the huge piñas into quarters. They're a more manageable size for baking. They transfer the chopped piña to a brick oven, where it's steam-baked for 79 hours. This thorough cooking converts the agave starch to sugar. In the process, the flesh softens and the color turns from white to reddish brown. The baked agave piña now spills into a shredder that rotates to tear the fruit into long, thin fibers. The fibers exit onto a conveyor. The shredded piña lands in a pit, where a worker forks it up and moves it into the path of a huge stone wheel called a tahona. Operated mechanically, the tahona wheel turns to crush the fibers and squeeze out the precious agave nectar. It takes two hours of crushing to extract all the juices. They pipe the juicy mash into wooden tanks and add yeast. The yeast causes fermentation, a process by which sugar is transformed into alcohol. After 72 hours of fermentation, the alcohol content reaches 5%. The fermented pulp and juices have an earthy, acidic bouquet, and the aroma fills the air. They transfer the fermented mash to small copper stills. Inside the stills, the alcohol is boiled off and the vapor condensed into a more potent liquid. This is called distillation. After two distillation cycles, they have tequila. A technician measures the alcohol content, and it's 55%. After straining out the pulp, they transfer the tequila to steel tanks. They add purified well water to dilute the alcohol content and bring it down to 40%. This tequila is now ready to drink, so it's over to the bottling line. With the bottles upside down on a revolving carousel, they spray the inside with real tequila for a quick rinse. The grippers flip them right-side up so they can be filled with 100% agave tequila. This automated system keeps the fill level precise. An employee corks the bottles and then sends them down the line. The next worker presses adhesive-backed transparent labels onto them. The see-through labels showcase the clarity of this fresh, premium tequila. For a drink with a little more complexity, they age the tequila in oak casks for two months or more, depending on the grade. During aging, the tequila takes on a woody flavor and turns a warm shade of amber. The master distiller personally approves each batch. He checks the color, inhales the aroma, and puts his observations down on paper. He also takes a little sip. No longer a rough swill for banditos, tequila has gone uptown and evolved into a more sophisticated drink. Waterbeds have come a long way since the ancient persians slept on water-filled goat skins. Hitting the market in the late 1960s, early models were pretty wavy and made some people seasick. But innovative changes in design make today's waterbeds as stable as a traditional mattress. Water doesn't compress, it displaces. That's why a waterbed mattress shapes to your body, giving you equal support everywhere with no pressure points. A washable quilted cover sits on top of the mattress to provide extra cushioning and absorb perspiration. The mattress is made of high-durability vinyl. It arrives at the waterbed factory in giant rolls which workers feed into a conditioning machine. At a speed of one yard per minute, the machine heats the vinyl to 100 degrees fahrenheit. This preshrinks the material, ensuring the mattress won't contract over time. Next, computer-guided machines cut out the mattress's top and bottom pieces. Die cutters stamp out the smaller and simpler corner and valve-related pieces. Then, workers lay the top piece on a wooden pattern mold. Applying this pattern makes the vinyl more flexible, enabling the mattress to better follow the form of the body. The company won't reveal exactly how this caged device molds the pattern into the vinyl. Now, with a die, workers cut a hole in the top piece for the fill valve. After fitting the valve and cap to a piece of vinyl printed with product information, they lay on the top piece, then fuse the vinyl with a high-frequency welder. It emits high-frequency electromagnetic waves that heat and cause the molecules to interact, blending the two pieces seamlessly into one. Next, the corners of the mattress. This is the most complex part of the process because it requires making a very particular angle. After fusing the folds with the high-frequency welder, they slip each corner onto a rounded form, then close off the tip by welding on a circle of vinyl. This makes a rounded corner, which is far more durable than a pointed one. Whereas regular mattresses are foam-filled, waterbed mattresses contain fiber which makes the bed waveless. Mattresses come in various degrees of stability. The more layers of fiber inside, the less the mattress moves. Once they've inserted the fiber, workers perform a final round of high-frequency welding to close up the mattress. First, they position an aluminum stick under the area they have to weld. A static laser line shows workers where to position the mattress in the automatic welder. Once the mattress is welded all around, they remove the stick through the valve hole, then flatten the mattress, distributing the fiber evenly within it. The final operation is quality-control check. They put the mattress in a press and, with a vacuum hose, extract all the air. Then, they set the mattress aside for six hours to ensure no air seeps back in, which would indicate a leak. Elsewhere in the factory, they construct the frame in which the mattress sits. The lower part is made of pvc plastic extruded into a stylish shape. Workers fuse the frame parts with regular welding, melting, then pressing together the edges to bond them. This factory doesn't mass-produce. Every single waterbed is made to order from a range of decor choices. The customer who ordered this one requested a frame upholstered in black faux leather. The mattress sits on a thick melamine base. They slide it into the frame, then secure it with screws. The upper sides of the frame are made of upholstered foam, designed to be soft against the back of your legs when you sit on the side of the bed. Waterbed mattresses are shipped empty. The installer fills it with water at the customer's home, leaving enough space inside for the water to displace under pressure, so even if the valve is open, water doesn't spill out, even when someone's lying on the bed. They may not be the fanciest of footwear, but flip-flops, also called thongs, are inexpensive and comfortable. It's believed these flat sandals with the y-shaped strap are modeled after traditional japanese sandals that have a wooden sole and a "y" strap woven from plant fibers. The anatomy of a flip-flop is pretty basic-- a sole and y-shaped straps called uppers. The sole is constructed from the top and bottom. They make the bottom out of either heat-moldable plastic or rubber. An injection-molding machine shoots the molten material into passing molds. Two fans positioned over the injector kick-start the cooling process. Then, a continuous water-cooling system takes over. 3 1/2 minutes after injection, the material is solid. They make the top soles from 3/10 inch-thick rubber sheets. A hydraulic press forces a sole-shaped die through the sheet, like a cookie cutter slicing through dough. The die also cuts a hole and two slits for attaching the uppers. Some flip-flops have decorations on the top soles. The design is applied on each pair manually using a standard screen-printing process. The factory prepares a screen for each color of the design. The screen is kind of like a stencil-- open mesh in the shape of the design, and the rest of the mesh is blocked. Workers load a pair of soles in each station of a rotary-screen printing machine. Then, they mount the screens. They close the first screen over the pair of soles, then, with a squeegee, spread ink across the screen surface. The ink passes through the open mesh, applying the design. They move the soles to the next screen and do the same with the second color of ink, and so on. Now for the uppers. For this flip-flop style, they glue ribbon onto cotton tape. Once they've correctly positioned the ribbon, they stitch it in place. Then, they connect the left-side and right-side straps with masking tape... Add a toe piece... Then stitch everything together. For aesthetics, they sew a cover piece over the toe piece. Uppers give flip-flops their look through different materials, colors, thicknesses, and embellishments. The design possibilities are endless. Now to connect the uppers to the top sole, workers insert the toe piece into the toe hole and a strap end into each slit. They apply glue... Trim the ends... Then insert a last-- a foot form in the required shoe size. They pull the straps tightly against it. Next, they coat the bottom of the top sole and the top of the bottom sole with glue. Then, a quick trip through an oven activates the adhesive. Workers then place the bottom sole on a positioning guide and stick the top sole onto it, locking the strap ends in between. This is instant-contact glue, so they have just one chance to get the alignment right. A 4-second bonding experience in a press, and they're "sole" mates. However, the former bottom sole is slightly larger than the former top sole. So, with a high speed sander, workers trim off the excess, leaving the edge even and smooth. After a manual sanding touch-up, if necessary, and thorough quality-control inspection, the flip-flops are ready for packaging. Workers stuff a pad of paper under the uppers to prop them up should the bag get squashed during transport. Once considered strictly beachwear, flip-flops have stepped it up in style to become fashionable everyday footwear. Not only used for jewelry or silverware, 80% of the world's silver is mined for industrial purposes. Silver is the most conductive and reflective metal on the planet. For example, it's used in electronic components and in construction as an insulation coating on glass. The mining company produces silver bars, the composition of which is 93% to 97% pure silver. It sells the bars to a refinery, which further purifies them for sale to industries. The action begins down in the mine, where geologists point a niton gun at various spots in the rock face. The device detects the levels of 40 different elements, including silver. Silver in its natural state isn't silver-colored at all. It's charcoal gray. Those silver-looking deposits are actually zinc and lead. Miners drill holes in the silver-rich areas the geologists pinpointed, then insert sticks of dynamite. After the blast, carts hall the chunks of rock, called ore, to the surface. Geologists then test ore piles and blend them as required to achieve a consistent amount of silver content per kilogram of ore. The ore first goes into the primary crusher. The machine's huge steel teeth break up the big chunks into smaller pieces. Those pieces then drop through grates below, into the secondary crusher, which breaks them down into even smaller pieces. Those go into vibrating cone crushers, which pulverize them into tiny pieces. A conveyor transports the crushed ore to the ball mill. At this point, the ore pieces are roughly 2/10 of an inch big. As the mill's large cylinder rotates, steel balls bounce around inside, grinding the ore into powder. A water-circulation system flushes the silver-rich powder out of the cylinder and into large tanks which keep the water moving. To separate and dissolve the metals the powder contains, workers pour in acid. 72 hours later, the rock waste now settles at the bottom. The solution containing dissolved silver is pumped through filter presses. The filter plates are treated with a zinc-based chemical which attracts silver molecules. As the solution passes through, the plates trap particles containing silver, forming a layer of black powder called silver precipitate. This precipitate is composed of approximately 50% silver and 50% waste-- the waste being a jumble of various metals, dirt, and other impurities. To separate the silver from the waste, they first dry the precipitate in a gas furnace for a couple of hours. In the mining company's lab, technicians continuously test ore samples to determine the grade, determined by the quantity of silver per kilogram of ore. They heat the samples to 2,000 degrees fahrenheit for about an hour to burn off the impurities. What's left after the burn-off are the silver and other metals, such as lead, zinc, copper, selenium, and cadmium. Lab technicians then treat the samples with a chemical that prevents silver from burning off and put them back in the oven. When the samples come out, about an hour later, all the other metals have burnt off, and only silver is left. They weigh the silver and compare it to the weight of the original sample in order to calculate the grade. The key to running a profitable mine is to ensure that the grade is consistently within certain parameters. Back at the mill, workers put the now dried silver precipitate into an oven, along with chemicals which prevent silver from burning off. Approximately four hours later, the silver and waste have separated and melted. Workers pour them into bar-shaped molds. The silver, being heavier, settles at the bottom. Workers skim off the waste floating on top. In less than five minutes, the molten silver cools and hardens, enabling workers to extract what is now a silver bar. The mining company sells the bars to a refinery for processing into industrial-grade silver.