Undergraduate / "I looked deeper into my cup of tea" - Stanford intellectually engaging essay help [4]

Heyy

I was just wondering if you could go through my essay and suggest anything I could do to improve it

1) Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.

You might say one cup of tea can't make a difference to the world, but while making myself a cup on I started to wonder, could it? There are more tea drinkers than internet users in the world today and their love for it gives them a common passion that connects all two and half billion of them. The power of tea can both connect and divide nations. The Boston Tea party was a catalyst in starting the American Revolution. In the past the British Empire relied on India for its beloved national drink and today the different varieties make tea an important export for countries such as China.

As I looked deeper into my cup of tea I thought about how it reached me. How much did the tea grower receive? How much did the supermarket selling it? If there was a sudden shortage of tea, this could have reverberations in countless other industries. The price would rise and this in turn would cause the demand for sugar and milk as complements to fall, resulting in lower prices for sugar producers and dairy farmers alike. At the same time the demand for a substitute such as coffee would rise, causing an increase in price and therefore an increase in the revenue gained by coffee exporting nations. A change in the price of one cup of tea could have effects on global trade patterns.

However there isn't just economics in a cup of tea. As I looked at the teabag before I put it in the cup I saw a regular moiré pattern as the two pieces of grated material played tricks with my eyes. I realized that physics, be it the fluid dynamics of diffusion and Archimedes principle or the vortex rings created as I poured my milk into my cup one drop at a time, pervades everything. That something so small and mundane can connect so many aspects of life leaves my mind buzzing with opportunities.

Thank you :)