How Does an Alcohol Breathalyzer Work?
Analysis Breathalyzers require you to breath into a device that analyzes the air expelled from your lungs for alcohol content. Most of the modern examples of these devices use infrared absorption spectroscopy for the analysis. Spectrographs are devices that analyze the interactions between matter and radiation. When light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation come into contact with matter, certain features of the radiation is altered in ways that can be observed to gather information about that matter. This technology is used in astronomy to determine what objects in deep space are made of. In a breathalyzer, a constant infrared beam is projected through the air expelled by the lungs and then is analyzed for consistency with the beam as it was originally projected. In this way, both the presence and quantity of alcohol in the exhaled air can be detected. Why Is Alcohol in the Lungs? A rather foolish misunderstanding is that alcohol vapor somehow gets into the lungs while alcohol
