The following is a guest post by blogger, Gina Williams. Interested in guest posting for The Academic Wino? Please contact me at becca@academicwino.com/
Red wine is known for being beneficial in several ways, mostly relating to health. It makes your boss’ tirade earlier in the day not seem so bad. It’s good for your heart. Its tannin stimulates appetite. It prolongs life. It prevents aging. It’s even believed to be associated with weight loss.
However, two really odd uses for red wine have come to light recently, neither of which you’d ever consider.
Red Wine Meets Your Car Battery
Red wine can charge your car battery. Seriously! No lie. Put away the jumper cables and get off the phone with AAA. Instead, grab that cheap red wine your creepy uncle’s new girlfriend brought over on Thanksgiving. According to a video released by Kip Kedersha (aka Kipkay), a do-it-yourself guru popularized by his YouTube videos and TV appearances, red wine is the answer to a low car battery. In his video, Kip pours red wine into a car battery’s battery cells. He explains throughout his video that because red wine is acidic, it promotes electron flow between the positive and negative terminals of your car battery. This electron flow allows your car battery to charge so that you can start and use your car.
Check it out for yourself below.
Red Wine Meets Physics
The insanity doesn’t stop with car batteries, it continues with superconductors. A superconductor is a material that can have zero electrical resistance and expulse magnetic fields at a particular temperature; the typical temperature is minus 389 Fahrenheit. Red wine was recently found to enable superconductors to conduct electricity more efficiently and productively. In August of 2010, Cornell University published research conducted by Japanese scientists working with superconductors. The scientists were conducting tests to see how certain liquids affected superconductors’ productivity. They began by first testing superconductor samples in water, ethanol, and mixtures of the two. Also included in the tests were the following alcohols with their corresponding shielding volume fraction from the superconductor samples:
· Red wine – 62.4%
· White wine – 46.8%
· Beer – 37.8%
· Japanese sake – 35.8%
· Whisky – 34.4%
· Shochu – 23.1%
The scientists reported that, “The value of the sample heated in red wine was more than 6 times larger than the average value of the water-ethanol mixtures…. In conclusion, we found that hot commercial alcoholic beverages were effective in inducing superconductivity in FeTe0.8S0.2 compared to pure water, ethanol, and water-ethanol mixtures. The largest shielding volume fraction and the highest Tc zero were achieved by heating the FeTe0.8S0.2 sample in red wine.”
After reading these two new uses for red wine, the question remains: what other purposes can red wine fulfill?
Gina Williams is a guest post and article writer bringing to us ways in which red wine have been used in far from ordinary ways. Gina also writes about motorcycle accidents.
Thoughts from The Academic Wino:
Great post, Gina! I wasn’t aware of many of the new uses for wine!
@ Red Wine in Car Batteries:
· I loved that video! Fat Bastard to the rescue! I’d be curious to see how long the battery would actually run on red wine, or if it is more of a short-term fix to get you to the mechanic to buy a new battery.
@ Red Wine in Superconductors:
· Crazy! I wonder just how much more efficient red wine in superconductors is for conducting electricity, compared to a control with no alcoholic beverage added. Maybe this could be another good way to recycle winery wastes!
Thanks for your post, Gina!
I am not a health professional, nor do I pretend to be. Please consult your doctor before altering your alcohol consumption habits. Do not consume alcohol if you are under the age of 21. Do not drink and drive. Enjoy responsibly!
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