40 Fun Facts About Ethanol

Tests of which famous rocket were hampered by technicians stealing and drinking its ethanol fuel?

V-2 fuel was a drinkable mix of ethanol and water. A pink dye added to deter thieves failed once crews learned to filter it out with potatoes.

Sagittarius B2, a giant gas cloud containing ethanol, lies near the center of which galaxy?

The Milky Way keeps this cloud about 390 light-years from its center. Sagittarius B2 also holds the compound that flavors raspberries, so some writers imagine it smelling of raspberry rum.

Which Ford car, launched in 1908, had an engine that could also run on ethanol or kerosene?

The Model T could switch fuels, but cheaper fossil fuel and then Prohibition made ethanol impractical for most drivers.

In England's old 'proof' test for ethanol content, which substance was soaked in spirits and then set alight?

Gunpowder that still burned after soaking put a spirit 'above proof', which mattered because spirits were taxed by strength. Proof was later fixed at about 57% alcohol.

Alcohol, the everyday name for ethanol, comes from the Arabic al-kuhl, a powder originally used as what?

Eye makeup is the root: kuhl was the dark powder, usually antimony, that still gives us the word kohl. Alchemists later used alcohol for any refined essence, then for the intoxicating part of wine.

Under US food rules, which baking flavoring must contain at least 35% ethanol to be labeled pure?

Vanilla extract is made by steeping the pods in ethanol and water. The FDA standard also sets a minimum weight of vanilla beans per liter.

Which builder's tool is named after the ethanol traditionally sealed with a bubble inside its glass vial?

A spirit level uses alcohol rather than water because it will not freeze and lets the bubble move quickly and settle accurately.

Which country launched the Pró-Álcool program in 1975 to run its cars on ethanol made from sugarcane?

Brazil now blends ethanol into all of its motor fuel, so the unblended kind is no longer sold anywhere in the country.

Which astronaut made the first American spaceflight in 1961 atop a Redstone rocket fueled by ethanol?

Alan Shepard flew for just 15 minutes in Freedom 7. The Redstone under him burned three parts ethyl alcohol to one part water.

Ethanol ranks as the world's second most consumed psychoactive drug, behind which other substance?

Caffeine alone outranks it. Ethanol takes second place as the active ingredient in every alcoholic drink.

Pure ethanol burns with a smokeless flame of which color, often too faint to see in daylight?

Blue and smokeless, the flame makes ethanol a handy fuel for lamps, cooking stoves and decorative fireplaces.

Ethanol stays liquid down to −114 °C, so it replaces mercury in which instrument used in extreme cold?

A thermometer filled with ethanol works down to about −70 °C, but tops out near 78 °C, where the liquid boils.

Fermenting sugar into ethanol also releases which gas, the one that makes bread dough rise?

Carbon dioxide and ethanol come off in equal numbers: every molecule of glucose yields two of each.

Which single-celled fungus turns the sugars in grape juice and grain mash into ethanol?

Yeast has done the job since ancient times, and one species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, makes wine, beer and bread alike.

Which French chemist showed in the 1850s that fermentation into ethanol is caused by living microbes, not decay?

Louis Pasteur took up the question at Lille after a local distiller asked why his beet alcohol kept souring, and overturned the view that fermentation was mere chemical decomposition.

Bacteria that turn the ethanol in wine or cider into acetic acid produce which kitchen staple?

Vinegar comes from this second fermentation, and the slimy film of bacteria that builds up in a slow batch is known as the mother.

Which organ breaks down most of the ethanol a person drinks, using the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase?

The liver handles about 90% of it, and long-term heavy drinking can leave the organ seriously damaged.

Gram for gram, ethanol's 7 calories rank second only to which nutrient for food energy?

Fat leads with 9 calories per gram, while protein and most carbohydrates supply about 4.

Almost all the fuel ethanol produced in the United States is made by fermenting which crop?

Corn supplies about 94% of American ethanol; enzymes added to the mash first break its starch down into simple sugars.

In fuel names such as E10 and E85, the number gives the percentage of ethanol; what is the rest?

Gasoline makes up the rest, so E10 is 90% ordinary fuel and runs in most modern cars with no changes to the engine.

The 'tears' that creep down the inside of a wine glass form because ethanol does what faster than water?

Ethanol evaporates faster from the thin film climbing the glass, and the shift in surface tension drags more wine upward until it falls back as drops.

Ethanol is known as grain alcohol; which poisonous relative is called wood alcohol after the way it was once made?

Methanol was once made by the destructive distillation of wood. Swallowing just a few grams can permanently damage the optic nerve.

Hospitals can give ethanol as an antidote to someone who has swallowed which sweet-tasting car fluid?

Antifreeze contains a glycol that the body converts into poisons. Ethanol competes for the same enzyme, so the glycol is not broken down.

Boiling a mix of ethanol and water cannot purify it beyond about 96%, because the two form which kind of mixture?

This azeotrope boils just below pure ethanol and well below water, giving off vapor with the same makeup as the liquid, so distilling it again changes nothing.

The human body first converts ethanol into which toxic compound, a contributing cause of hangovers?

Acetaldehyde is normally cleared by a second enzyme. Many East Asians carry a weaker version of it, so the compound builds up and their faces flush red.

Which rare condition makes gut microbes ferment food into ethanol, intoxicating someone who has had no alcohol?

Auto-brewery syndrome is so rare that it has been raised, sometimes successfully, as a defense in impaired-driving cases.

Which device did Indiana State Police captain Robert Borkenstein invent in the 1950s?

The Breathalyzer measures the ethanol in a driver's exhaled breath. It followed a 1930s machine that caught the breath in a balloon, and its brand name became the generic word.

In many countries, denatured alcohol, ethanol made unfit to drink, is traditionally dyed which color as a warning?

Violet dye marks it at a glance. Because it escapes the heavy taxes on drinks, additives make it bitter or poisonous so that nobody is tempted.

Residue on 9,000-year-old pottery shows Neolithic villagers were already drinking fermented alcohol in which country?

In China, jars from the village of Jiahu held traces of a drink fermented from rice, honey and fruit.

Ethanol lit lamps across the United States from about 1840 until a tax imposed during which war made it uneconomical?

The American Civil War tax fell on all industrial alcohol, and it was decades before ethanol returned as a fuel, this time for cars.

Which comet was caught in 2015 releasing as much ethanol as 500 bottles of wine every second?

Comet Lovejoy was also shedding a simple sugar, and the find was the first time ethyl alcohol had been observed in a comet.

Which group of atoms, written OH at the end of ethanol's formula C2H5OH, defines the alcohol family?

Hydroxyl groups form hydrogen bonds, which make pure ethanol so thirsty that it pulls moisture straight out of the air.

Industrial ethanol that is not fermented is made by adding water to which gas, a petroleum product?

Ethylene takes on water to become ethanol, and the reaction also runs in reverse: ethanol can be dehydrated back into this important chemical feedstock.

Ethanol-based hand sanitizers kill most germs but are less effective against which highly contagious stomach bug?

Norovirus is one reason washing with soap and water is still generally preferred, with sanitizer as the convenient backup.

Which American brand of grain alcohol is illegal to sell at its full 95% ethanol strength in some US states?

Everclear at 190 proof is more than twice as strong as standard liquor, and its name has become shorthand for any high-proof grain alcohol.

Traditional American applejack was strengthened by 'jacking': leaving hard cider out in winter and removing what?

Ice forms from the water first, so lifting it out leaves a stronger drink behind, a trick known as freeze distillation.

Which hypothesis traces the human taste for ethanol to primate ancestors that sought out ripe, fermenting fruit?

The drunken monkey idea, proposed by biologist Robert Dudley, holds that the smell of ethanol once led primates to scarce calories in the rainforest.

Which motor racing series switched all its cars to a 98% ethanol fuel blend in 2007?

The IndyCar Series made the switch one season after introducing a 10% blend; stock car racing followed in 2011 with a 15% mix.

Which small Malaysian mammal spends hours each night drinking fermented palm nectar yet shows no sign of intoxication?

The pen-tailed treeshrew takes in doses that would intoxicate a human from the bertam palm, whose nectar is among the most alcoholic of natural foods.

Ethanol slows the central nervous system, which places it in which broad class of drugs?

A depressant slows brain activity rather than lowering mood. Ethanol boosts the brain's main calming signal, which is why reactions and judgment fade with each drink.