Tea Temps

I found a new morning drug option to add into the rotation along with English Breakfast tea and espresso.

Now that I have your attention, here’s the question:

You have 2 identical tea cups (cup A and cup B) with 2 identical tea bags in them. You add 25cl of boiling (100° C) water to each cup.

To cup A you immediately add 5cl of refrigerated (4° C) milk.

You then wait 5 minutes and add an identical amount of milk to cup B.

After the milk is mixed in the second cup, which of the following statements is true and why?

a) Cup A is warmer than cup B.

b) Cup B is warmer than cup A.

c) Both cups have equal temperatures.

Note: the ambient temperature in the room is 22° C (72° F).

Hint: No calculations are required to come up with the answer to this question. I provided specific temperatures so that there is no ambiguity about the relative temperatures of each element in the system.

P.S. The tea in the photo is actually called “Morning Thunder” and it’s not bad. I mostly bought it because of the steam coming out of the bison’s nostrils.