This innovative 'Artificial tongue' device is claimed to be really good at picking out real whisky from fake whisky

Scientists have invented a new 'artificial tongue' that essentially does job of a real, human tongue, all credit goes to its different taste buds. Well, believe it or t, this device is claimed to be really good at picking out real whisky from fake whisky.

brain behind 'Artificial Tongue'

Scientists from Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde are brain behind this artificial tongue. It can taste subtle differences between drams of whisky using properties in gold and aluminium.

This way, it can test differences between spirits and could be ultimately used to help cut down on tre in counterfeit alcohol.

In a paper published on Tuesday in Royal Society of Chemistry's journal 'Nascale', engineers describe how y built tiny taster.

Scientists used device to sample a selection of famous Scotch whiskies from some of well-kwn brands such as Glenfiddich, Glen March and Laphroaig in ir experiment.

"We call this an artificial tongue because it acts similarly to a human tongue  like us, it can't identify individual chemicals which make coffee taste different to apple juice but it can easily tell difference between se complex chemical mixtures," said Alasdair Clark, of University of Glasgow's School of Engineering and paper's le author.

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"We're t first researchers to make an artificial tongue, but we're first to make a single artificial tongue that uses two different s of nascale metal 'tastebuds', which provides more information about 'taste' of each sample and allows a faster and more accurate response.

"While we've focused on whisky in this experiment, artificial tongue could easily be used to 'taste' virtually any liquid, which means it could be used for a wide variety of applications. In dition to its obvious potential for use in identifying counterfeit alcohols, it could be used in food safety testing, quality control, security really any area where a portable, reusable method of tasting would be useful," he said.

How it works

device has sub-microscopic slices of gold and aluminium act as tastebuds.

As part of testing, scientists poured samples of whisky over tastebuds. se tastebuds are about 500 times smaller than ir human equivalents. Scientists n measured how y absorb light while submerged.

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device was able to differentiate between drinks with greater than 99 per cent accuracy. device was also capable of picking up on distinctions between same whisky d in different barrels.

It could also tell difference between same whisky d for 12, 15 and 18 years.

(With inputs from PTI)