I feel like it would be useful to know exactly how much alcohol is in a can or a bottle. Also why is alcohol the only thing measured in percentages and not sugar or caffeine or medicine?

  • excitingburp@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    it would not turn into a gas at normal conditions.

    It does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapor_pressure. In an airtight container you would have an equilibrium of alcohol vapor and liquid. In open-atmosphere, the atmosphere basically behaves like an infinitely large volume for the vapor - so the alcohol will completely vaporize (and cool the surface it is on in order to do so).

    It’s also trivial to demonstrate by pouring alcohol onto a surface, it disappears in seconds. Same with gasoline and numerous other liquids you’ve surely seen do this (another example is hand sanitizer, which is basically pure alcohol).

    Being diluted doesn’t really help with any of this though. Also alcohol is kept in bottles, which are usually airtight until they are first opened.

    • subtext@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean sure, but you could say that about any liquid, or even any solid for that matter (with sublimation). But that’s not really what I was talking about when I responded.