Re: New Bike Path

On 7/15/2024 7:12 AM, Ted Heise wrote:

On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 15:24:32 -0500,
   AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

  On 7/14/2024 2:52 PM, Ted Heise wrote:

On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 11:13:10 -0700,
    Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:

   On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 13:59:01 -0400, Catrike Ryder
<Soloman@old.bikers.org> wrote:

 

Much if the enjoyment of fine brandy involves the aroma.
You're supoose cup your hand around the bottm if the snifter
to warm the brandy and release the aroma.

>
   Well, if aroma is what you really want, may I suggest what
   I did in college.  I had an early nebulizer:
<https://www.google.com/search?q=nebulizer&tbm=isch>
   I loaded it with all kinds of intoxicating and psychoactive
   chemicals. The idea was to vaporize the liquid and absorb
   it through the lungs or in some cases, through the skin:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_inhalation>
>
   Hint:  Ingesting alcoholic beverages through the stomach is
   inefficient.  Most of the alcohol is removed by the kidneys
   and liver. Entering through the lungs is more efficient
   because the alcohol goes directly into the blood stream...

>
Oh my, and I thought drinking absolute ethanol was
adventurous.
>

  That brings memories! When Rich 'Captain America' Hammen was
  national road champion, local parties featured pilfered 95%
  ethanol from the Chemistry Department.
>
  I quickly learned to not drink that.

 Yeah, 95% ethanol can get you stupid drunk in a hurry.  On the
other hand, absolute (i.e., > 99% ethanol) has additional risks.
 Ethanol (EtOH) forms an azeotrope with water, so 95% is the max
purity that can be achieved by typical distillation.  Getting to
higher concentrations requires special techniques.  Historically,
this was done by including benzene in the distillation to disrupt
the EtOH/water affinity.  This process typically leaves traces of
benzene in the resulting product.  Indeed, the EtOH I pilfered
from the lab tasted horrid, even mixed with orange juice.
 More recently, molecular sieves are used to make absolute ethanol.
Even without trace benzene there are risks--because of the high
affinity between EtOH and water, if you dring neat absolute EtOH
it will suck the water right out of contacting tissues.  Not good.
 

+1
That was explained clearly to me by a chemist in 1971.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971