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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1861 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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"Ethanol" in a school chemistry lab is probably meths - the duty on drinkable pure alcohol is pretty high, even if not marketed for drinking. Adding 5-10% methanol makes the alcohol too toxic to drink and therefore unattractive to drinkers. We were all warned about this in no uncertain terms before doing an experiment with the stuff.

In the UK, they don't add anything additional to meths to make it unpalatable, so ocasionally tramps and suchlike posion themselves by drinking it. Meths sold to the general public as a fuel/cleaning product is died purple to discourage accidental drinking. But a school science lab is going to be using "industrial methylated spirits" - i.e. an ethanol/methanol mix with nothing else added to it that could affect the chemistry. (Of all the chemicals in my school lab, this was oddly the only one they needed a licence to buy).

I'm not sure about the situation in the US.

Most alcohol poisoning in the US is using homebrew that was messed up somehow. Sometimes this is a fungal contamination and sometimes it's making methanol instead of ethanol. Industrial alcohol contains something to render it undrinkable, but this is normally gasoline rather than methanol.

Wouldn't that cause a problem in the lab by making the "alcohol" immiscible with water?

For industrial uses? I’m not sure what they do in chemistry labs.

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