Dutch Students Invent Powdered Alcohol

***LesMTS*** · 7th June 2007 12:51pm

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyE...87318220070606

Just add water to the powder in the sachet and, like magic, an alcoholic beverage.

Apparently because the ethanol is the form of a powder it bypasses licensing laws and can be sold to minors.

Now, seeing that "powdering" alcohol is in absolute defiance of the laws of chemistry, does anyone want to suggest what it is that they're actually selling?

**endless psych** · 7th June 2007 2:04pm

From:- http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/entertain...eal-115314.php

UPDATE - A real person who knows chemistry, David, writes:

I'm a big fan of your site. I'm also a chemistry professor.

Alcohol's active ingredient is ethanol (CH3-CH2-OH). Ethanol is a volatile liquid-- meaning that it evaporates much more readily than water, or even than rubbing alcohol (aka isopropanol). So the short answer to your question is no, "subyou" cannot be a powdered form of ethanol because ethanol at room temperature is a liquid (and a short-lived one at that). However, subyou could be say 95% filler (sugar?) which has been mixed with a small amount of ethanol (your link suggests 4.8% ethanol by volume). Given that this amount of alcohol, even if one were to eat the powder straight, is only 9.6 proof "alcohol", I'm skeptical that it's as powerful as the website would like us to believe. It would be more efficient to get a buzz from dropping a bit of Everclear into your favorite liquid. That said, reformulating ethanol into a physical form that bypasses alcohol tax combined with advertising aimed at customers of questionable legal drinking age is pretty unsavory.