> > The innocence of many of your questions as posed should be more overtly > valued... many of us are busy asking (quietly) similar or related > questions. > Amen! A thing to think about re: mixing of alcohol and water is that both are polar molecules, and thus mutually attracted, which no doubt helps keep them from separating. However, since they are also equally attracted to themselves, they could conceivably settle out were it not for the aforementioned phenomena such as convection, et cetera. A solution however (and I think no distinction is made about the states of the materials [for example, the gas CO2 can dissolve in water to form carbonic acid, the burning sensation felt when consuming carbonated drinks], although it is hard to imagine a solid dissolving in a solid) would need to be electrolytically separated, is my understanding of the difference in definitions. The reason for this is, taking the example of salt in water, is that the salt separates into it's ionic components (for reasons unknown to me pending further reading) which then would repel each other...or only the like-charged ones would. Hm, I guess that too is pending further reading. -Arlo James Barnes
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