All this weekend, I'm at Electromagnetic Field, the enormous hacker camp in the middle of the UK.
And this is the first thing I didn't know that I found out here.
I'm with Toby Jackson from Nottingham Hackspace and his marvelous booze fogger.
What on Earth is this?
This is my contribution to the BarBot project, which is kind of being built behind you.
Basically, a device for turning alcohol and spirits into a rather nice inhalable mist.
It's not a complicated device. It's mostly pretty work in a nice suitcase, but deep inside it
with my wonderful wiring is two glass tubes which have inside two ultrasonic foggers which have
a little brass plate that vibrates ultrasonically, which just smashes whatever liquid is in there
to tiny, tiny droplets, which then float. You can buy them off the Internet. You want the ones
that cost about £20. It's a heavier-than-air mist, so we have this little air pump which just goes in there
and ensures that, in proper mad scientist fashion, you get this rather nice effect.
And it's swirling over the top. So, basically, it's to look pretty and to be fun.
Does it get people drunk?
It makes drunk people think they're drunk. In a column of this, you get about two or three teaspoonfuls of booze
Take the lid off and you can inhale it in, as I just did, and you get a bit of a head rush.
And you get it here in the back of your throat. Once you've got a few drinks in you, it'll make you go,
"Ooh, hello," and be a little bit drunker than you were beforehand. So, it's relatively safe,
but it just feels like it's a lot more of a-
You said "relatively safe"?
Yeah, you are inhaling alcohol -- you're inhaling droplets of vodka into your lungs.
That's kind of a bad idea. But many fun things are bad ideas. So if you start putting your face mask
on this sort of thing, and inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, that's going to mess you up
because basically, if you drink too much, you throw up, and, you know, have a bad time.
If you inhale too much, you can't breathe it back out. You can't throw it up. There's no body safety mechanism.
Your body's not designed to go, "Oh yeah, I can throw this stuff up."
It just goes, "Oh god, I've-.." and then, you know, liver poisoning.
It's not a very good idea in the first place, but if you're under 18, it's illegal. C'mon kids, play safe.
Lovely, thank you very much.
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