The universe is full of physics-based mysteries. Did you know that the only thing faster than the speed of light is the expansion of the universe? Satellites are constantly falling into nothingness, only to be pulled back onto an oval shaped trajectory with the Earth due to gravity. Some scientists even believe that every unit of matter is connected to one another through microscopic vibrating "strings," and that there are a minimum of ten different dimensions existing at the same time.
To at least one American, "ice" could also be added to this list. A woman named Stacey Pincus is suing Starbucks for $5 million dollars because Starbucks iced coffees have ice in them. According to the case report, the plaintiff argues that the tall, grande, and venti sizes advertise the number of ounces contained within the drinks. However, "Pincus says that Starbucks customers who order cold drinks are actually getting far less than the advertised fluid ounces because the company fills a large portion of the cup with ice." Pincus "seeks to represent a class of all persons who purchased a cold drink from Starbucks in the last 10 years."
According to Starbucks annual sales reports, the chain sells an average of 3,861,778,846 cups of coffee annually. 3,861,778,846 times 10 is almost 40 billion people. Assuming that about half of the coffee drinks sold are cold, and that 75 percent of those sales are by repeat customers, this means that Pincus is representing about 5 billion people in her lawsuit. So congratulations to the plaintiff for creating the single largest coalition in the world, about 10 times the size of the United States military during World War II.
"Ice" (or as it's known in the science community, "frozen H2O") is traditionally put in drinks to make them colder. This presence of ice is usually indicated by adding the word "iced" to the front of the name of the drink. For example, in Starbuck's category "iced coffee," it is safe to assume that the drinks in this category will, in fact, contain ice as one of their main ingredients. That's kind of like ordering a salad and then being pissed off because it has all this lettuce and not enough chicken.
I get it, we all want more Starbucks. Personally, I wish Starbucks came in economy sized 32 oz. containers like the sodas at Mcdonald's so I can fill them with espresso, drink it all in one sitting, and then die. Unfortunately, unless Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz has finalized that contract with Beelzebub (unlikely, the devil has bulldog lawyers) there's no other way to keep the drinks cold, let alone "iced." It really is the most important catch-22 of our day. When you put ice in the cup, you lose some of the product. If you leave the ice out of the cup, then it's not iced; the drink relegates itself back to "lukewarm," which is worse than drinking hemlock. Ether way, I'm sure Starbucks' team of scientists is hard at work searching for the next solution in physics to avoid this frivolous lawsuit.
