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I need to identify a substance that is immiscible with water that is or can be made cloudy.

At the moment I'm using glycerol, but I don't know how to make glycerol cloudy nor is it perfectly immiscible with water.

Clarity:

I need to make a bottle containing two liquids. One part being water mixed with rhodamine and the other part another liquid that is immiscible with the rhodamine water mix that is cloudy. The other chemical can either be cloudy already or be mixed with another substance so that it can become cloudy.

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  • $\begingroup$ Made cloudy? What do you mean? $\endgroup$
    – M.A.R.
    Nov 19, 2015 at 20:46

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It smells but I think chloroxylenol 48 mg in 250 ml ethanol mixed with water would be what your looking for, I'm not sure what it's called where you are but it's a common antiseptic sold everywhere, in Australia the most common brand is Dettol.

Also , if something is completely immiscible with water it will form two phases , both relatively clear, eg water/xylene.

If you mix the solution it will go cloudy but then seperate, the longer it takes to do this depends on how much it was mixed, an emulsion can be formed but that's not what your looking for.

You want something that's only very slightly or sparingly soluble but doesn't seperate into a different phases once it's mixed.

Dettol came straight into my mind but I'm sure there's many more. Arrowroot or cornflour mixed with water would produce a milky/cloudy solution.

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