Thing To Consider Today: miscibility.

Oil and water don't mix, goes the saying.

Have these people never made salad dressing?

Well, okay, oil and water do mix if you beat them hard enough, but they aren't miscible, which describes two liquids that mix together so thoroughly that the resulting liquid turns out clear.

Sometimes the results of being immiscible can be quite pretty:


diesel on water: photo by John

even commercially pretty:


work and photo by Gabriela Ruellan

and sometimes they're even commercially useful: the Parkes Process relies upon the immiscibility of silver and lead - and the miscibility of silver and zinc - to produce very pure silver.

Alcohol and water are miscible, thankfully, or else a glass of beer would need constant agitation to stop itself reverting to something very near to a thin layer of neat alcohol with a long water chaser.

Above all, read the label on the paint tin before trying to clean your brushes...

...and thank heavens for mayonnaise, milk - washing up liquid.

Thing To Consider Today: miscibility. This word comes from the Latin miscēre, which means to mix.