Charlie, the edible inventor

Next time you go to your favourite bar, suggest to the people behind the bar that you would like to lick your cocktail rather than drink it. Chances are they will decide you are already over the limit.

However UK-based ‘food inventor’ Charlie Harry Francis has created a levitating cocktail machine called the Levitron, which uses sound waves to levitate tiny droplets of cocktail, which users can then lick out of the air. "It’s a pretty powerful machine," he says. "So far we’ve made a levitating gin and tonic at 70 percent proof and a levitating Bloody Mary cocktail using vodka at 160 per cent proof which will blow your socks off,” Mr Francis said.

Charlie vows that hegrew up on an 'ice cream farm' in the deepest depths of South West Wales and spent much of his childhood building machines and eating ice cream. He loves building, making, inventing and experimenting.

So far he's invented the Popcorn Hairdryer, Nitro Ice Cream Buggy, Soup Washing Machine, Gramophone Ice Cream Pottery Wheel, Edible Mist Machine, Instant Lollipop Maker, Whirligig Candyfloss Whirlwind, Levitron Cocktail levitating Device, Glow in the Dark Ice Cream and the Olfactic Dog Nose.

He's currently working on the Jellybean Waterfall, Dinosaur Meat, Music of Meals, Neurological Joygasm Hat, Popcorn Storm, Cow Influencer and the Edible Hairdo among other things.

Mr Francis says the Levitron was the first step in a wider project to create contactless cutlery. Next the team are going to look at levitating popcorn and eventually they want to be able to float an entire roast meal into a consumer’s mouth.

Professor Drinkwater is the Professor of Ultrasonics at Bristol University, specialising in Ultrasonics; Non-Destructive Testing (NDT); Ultrasonic arrays; and Ultrasonic particle manipulation. He is also the head of the Ultrasonics and Non-Destructive testing research group.

“Sound waves, even in the form of your voice have an inherent amount of power,” Professor Drinkwater said. “The Levitron uses very powerful sound waves in the ultrasonic spectrum which crucially are beyond the range of human hearing, otherwise it would seriously damage your ears when the machine was switched on,” he said.

The set up costs for the machine are currently about GBP30,000 but Mr Francis said his team was also working to get the price of the machine down.

If all this sounds totally unbelievable, then watch this...

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