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Powdered Alcohol

This spring, a company announced that powdered alcohol, or Palcohol, would soon be hitting the market. But in the wake of widespread worry about health risks, its approval by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau was rescinded. Still, no amount of legislation could keep dampen the curiosity of Popular Science senior editor Paul Adams. So he whipped up his own recipe for powdered alcohol. Now you too can try eating booze—although we wouldn’t recommend it.

151: minimum recommended rum proof for powdering

32 square meters: the surface area of the average human gut

Micrograph Image Showing Intestinal Villi

84 years: the time it takes for 9 drops of pitch to fall

215 calls to poison centers per month: involve e-cigarette liquids, one of the reasons the FDA has put new restrictions on vaping

35 million cubic feet: the amount of nuclear waste at a seaside dump in Britain, which is “virtually certain to be eroded by rising sea levels”

Sellafield nuclear site

The Sellafield nuclear site in northwest England. About six kilometers (4 miles) to the south is the nuclear waste site, the Low Level Waste Repository, where material from Sellafield and elsewhere is stored.

98.52 percent: the portion of human faces that a new algorithm can identify correctly

60 years: the age of the solar cell this week

Solar Arrays on the ISS

$200: the price to pre-order a Roomba-like miniature printer

Pocket Printer

The Week In Numbers