Starbucks: Coffeeshop/Chemistry Lab

I'm typing away in a Starbucks right now, and there is a strange scene going on before me. A man sits at the table directly in front of me. He is a middle-aged half-black man with short, curly salt-and-pepper hair and goatee (the kind that circles over the lips and joins to the beard). He is preppily dressed in black trousers, fuzzy gray vest over a checkered button-down shirt. Nice leather shoes and professorish-looking glasses. A small pile of books lie under his seat, next to a heavy-looking black leather briefcase. So far so normal. The strange part is what is sitting on his table: four different types of bottled water, a bottle of green gatorade, an unidentified white bottle, and a cup of coffee.

Thought 1: This is one well-hydrated man.

Thought 2: He must be on the liquid diet.

But then, the next time I looked up, I observed a few new additions to the ensemble on the table: 5 clear, plastic Starbucks cups, each filled with about 1/4 cup of liquid. He then pulled out this tiny vial of red liquid and piped some into each of the cups filled with water or gatorade. As the drops fell in and mixed with the liquids, their color transformed so that now, one cup held a pale blue liquid, another a pale purple, red, and so on. Snatches of the conversation between the man and his companion who just joined him drifted my way, words like "acid", "weight loss", "chlorine".

Hm, it is no longer a mystery, but still, what a strange sight to behold in your average Starbucks coffeeshop.