Eli5: Why does alcohol remove ink?
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I assume you’re asking why alcohol removes permanent ink? Because it won’t work very well on water based inks.
The reason is because, like water dilutes water based inks, permanent markers are solvent based which can be diluted by alcohol or other solvents.
You can also remove permanent marker with white board pens for the same reason, the additives in white board pens mix with the ink and you can just rub it off.
Some things will dissolve in water, in fact most things will and that’s why we use water for washing things.
But there are some things that will NOT dissolve in water. But many of those things are alcohol soluble and so we use alcohol to clean those up. Ink is a good example, as are many paints, some oils and so on. Things that water just does not work on, alcohol often does.
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