Sugar water

I usually make myself a cup of tea when I get into my office in the morning.... Typically some variation of Japanese green, such as with lemon & ginseng, or with roobios. Christine tells me that the proper method for making tea, (and I stress proper because last year she spent two weeks in Scotland drinking tea with her British Aunt), is to let the tea bag seep and then remove it before mixing in the sugar and/or cream. I couldn't be bothered, I throw in a cube of sugar and the tea bag at the same time and stir the whole works up. I've even been known to forget to take the bag out before I start to drink. Yeah, yeah.. I'm going to commoner's hell.
Anyways, the point of the story. This morning I poured some near-boiling water into my mug from the kettle, then sat done at my desk and dropped in the sugar cube. Before adding the tea bag though, I just stopped and watched the sugar at the bottom of the mug. It was really trippy. The hot water penetrated into the cube very quickly, filling the small gaps and forcing the air out in tiny bubbles. The color changed from solid white to a dull opaque silver. Then the walls started to crumble. Chunks of the sides dropped away like giant sheets of ice dropping off the edge of an ice cliff into the ocean. The crumbled remains would simply disappear shortly after hitting the bottom of the mug. Eventually the cube was whittled down to a small spherical core. That core fell over on it's side, then just disappeared as well.
So if anyone out there has never watched a sugar cube dissolve in hot water, I highly recommend it... I'm still recovering from the rush.