Comment on Why is alcohol measured in percentages?

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excitingburp@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

it would not turn into a gas at normal conditions.

It does: 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.

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