Alcohol Neutralization Model

Your patient claims that he only had one beer every 2 hours since 4 PM. However, his blood alcohol was .025 (which is 15 mL of alcohol) when he was brought in at 10 PM.

Is this possible?

At what time will he be sober?

I. Basic Model

Create:

• Stock: Blood_Alcohol
• Flow: Breakdown

• Set initial blood alcohol at 6000 mL of blood - (.01% is limit so, 6 mL)
• Set initial outflow at 1 mL/hr to be rid of alcohol after 6 hours

Is this what you think really happens?

II. Accurate Model

Picture blood as marbles- blue are alcohol, silver is blood. The number of blue marbles we scoop out each time we scoop depends on the concentration of blue marbles.

Guess the relationship of removal to concentration of alcohol.

With this in mind, draw a connector from Blood_Alcohol to Breakdown

Re-define outflow as a graph. This will have direct upward correlation

Y-axis range 0-3
X-axis range 0=10

Predict what will happen to alcohol over time now

Run again

Define Legal Limit - separate cycle - value of 6 mL (.01% of 6000mL of blood in the body)

Define inflow, Drinking

Become graph
Y-axis range 0-5
X-axis range 0-12

Horizontal step graph

Show how to change time specs and graph range

1. 4 mL at hour 2
2. 4 mL every other hour