OH!
OH!
17 comments
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Technically, it's a solvent.
But the pun is too good, so for the purpose of advancing interest in chemistry, I will let it pass.
Have an up vote.
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Alcoholic drinks, commonly referred to as “alcohol”, are solutions, you pedant.
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D'OH!
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It's not alcohol's fault that English is a stupid language, I will comfort some alcohol later and reassure it.
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The best kind of correct
17 comments
But, it’s not. Alcohol is not a homogeneous mixture of two or more substances, nor a substance dissolved into another.
It’s its own chemical category of one or more hydroxyl groups bound to a saturated carbon atom.
It is a solvent but not a solution
Exactly. If you’re gonna make a chemistry joke, at least get it right.
Something like “Alcohol isn’t a solution, but it can be a solvent for the right problem” would be clever and true.
Hm.. In german there's not even a big difference between the words. One is 'Lösungsmittel' the other one is 'Lösung'. So I think for us it works fine either way.
okay but 'alcohol' in its original meaning (alcoholic drink) is, right?
No, because the alcohol in a drink (ethanol) is still not a solution.
That’s not the original meaning either. The original meaning came from Arabic for a stibnite distillation used as eye liner. It came from Al-kuhl. It’s the same way that “spirit” came to mean a hard liquor. Distilling something down to its purest form was meant to harness the “spirit” of the thing.
A given spirit is a solution of alcohol and water, but alcohol itself is not. Which makes the whole “technically” part of the joke fall flat.