Tackling Ethanol

[Ike]

Actually they do mix well to some extent. Alcohol is hydroscopic, which literally means "water loving". Alcohol will mix very thoroughly with water, but not completely. So you get a boundary where the two become separate. Here's an interesting link.

"Devotees of Scotch and water should be advised they may never attain the perfect blend. Scientists have used the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to study the electronic states of methanol, the simplest of the alcohols, both in and out of solution with water; they have shown that, at the molecular level, alcohol and water don't completely mix. " http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/...and-water.html