I’m staring into my whisky wondering why it looks so swirly, like there is a lot of weird like refraction going on, and google cannot answer my question.
In: Chemistry
Water and alcohol have different densities. This means that they interact with light differently. The scientific term for this is the “index of refraction”. When you mix two chemicals with different indicies of refraction, you will get a swirling effect as the chemicals mix that will disappear when mixing is complete.
It is a similar effect to when you see distortion due to hot air rising from a hot object. The hot air is less dense, and so has a different index of refraction than the colder air it is rising into.
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