Pondering Innerspace

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OK here goes with the pointless movie question of the week, but I've always wondered about one particular scene in Joe Dante's fun 80's flick Innerspace.

It's the scene in which Martin Short takes a big gulp of booze and our pint sized (no pun intended) hero Dennis Quaid fills his flask and gets drunk.

So here's my question for any science geeks out there...

Would old Quaidy chops have really gotten drunk on that booze? Or would the molecule what-che-me-call-its have been too big for him to absorb?

Please help because I'm loosing sleep over this one



will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
I dunno. I"m still trying to understand why nobody that works on a newspaper can figure out Clark Kent is Superman.



I havent seen this movie in ages.
And as for your question, I guess he would. Booze is booze. Although by the time the alcohol enters Martin Short's body and gets to Quaid...doesn't the booze become just bodily fluid ? l0l I don't know just random thinking on my part.



Breathing is like a key and a lock. Shrink one and the other does not work. Shrink Dennis Quaid and the alcohol molecules would be far too big to combine with his own molecules and make him drunk.

As to Clark Kent, that was explained decades ago (in a previous Superman incarnation). One of Superman's powers which he hardly ever used was super-hypnotism and he had unknowingly been using it at a very low level for years in his effort to keep his identity from those around him so that he unwittingly made them see a weedy Clark Kent instead of a muscular guy in a business suit.

More recently it was said that he changed his voice, his stance, his way of walking and acting so that even without the act he puts on as Clark Kent, he is like another person entirely.
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That's crazy talk. It's the glasses; always has been. Nobody will ever figure out that disguise. You look at Clark with the glasses on and he looks nothing like Superman. Nothing at all. The most brilliant disguise of all time I says.

And I say Quaid would get drunk as a skunk. Molecules, Shmolecules... Ever seen a Molecule? No? Molecules are small that's why.
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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Yeah. I believe Quaid was collecting the booze somewhere in or near the esophagus, but I haven't checked yet. The thing to remember is that Quaid caught the booze in a miniaturized flask. Even if the alcohol molecules broke up when they entered his flask, they could easily recombine once shaken up inside the flask by that little robotic hand (or Quaid). If you don't believe that (and I seriously do), there are all kinds of different alcoholic compounds, so even if it's not the exact same booze, it's booze.
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Thanks guys, I can throw away those sleeping pills now...

...hold on a minute! Clark Kent and Superman are the same person?

Sheesh who'd a thunk it.



Atomic force microscopes move over the surface of a single atom and show what it is like. First picture of an atom I saw was about 1962. A group of titanium atoms on a needle sharpened to almost a literal point.

Think of molecules fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. What happens if you change the size of some of those pieces? Alcohol molecules don't literally make you drunk. It is the new chemical combinations that cause body changes which give you the symptoms that we call "drunk".

When Superman was revamped by John Bryne a few decades back, a computer belonging to Luthor worked out that Clark Kent was Superman but Luthor refused to believe it, that anyone with so much power could live like a normal human being.



reservoir dogs circa 1881
so many questionable scientific practices in a film and you pick that one!lol by the by when clark kent is superman he apparently vibrates constantly so his features are never fully distinguishable to any one looking (probabily also why lois enjoys his "cuddles")



I'm currently watching the 'Allo 'Allo TV series about Germans in a small town in occupied France in WWII. In it is a little old guy called "Le Clerc" (pronounced Le Clare), played by Jack Haig. He keeps turning up in different disguises but everyone knows it's him as he lifts his glasses and says: "It is I, Le Clerc". As the exasperated Café owner René mutters; "the man of a thousand faces, and everyone the same."