ArticleThe bubbly biochemist

4 fun facts about boiling water!

Milly11644 views
Learn new facts about water! #water #science #solvent #desinfection
When I am in my kitchen, I usually know exactly how long I need to boil an egg to get the desired result. I visited my sister recently, and I wanted to make soft boiled eggs for breakfast – i failed.. I failed at boiling an egg 🙂 So we were discussing what the reason could be (yes 2 scientists troubleshooting a hardboiled egg #truestory). It turns out that her cooker heats the water slower than mine does, leading to the fact that she actually boils her eggs a shorter time than I do. By the time her water boils, her eggs have already started the cooking process, whereas mine have not yet. Counterintuitive isn’t it!
 
This got me thinking about water – boiling or not – and all the fun/weird information I learned about it when I was studying chemistry. Yes I swear: sometimes my teachers just popped out some facts that now seem logical, but at the time not really! Here are a few fun facts, that might help you understand why we use water the way we do in our everyday lives!
 

Fact 1: Water is the most common solvent we use – yes, I love buzzwords:)

Yes! Let’s start with this one: let’s use a word that a lot of people may associate with toxic liquids used in various situations such as acetone or benzene. Water is a solvent – and a very powerful one at that. A solvent is just a liquid that can be used to dissolve and/or dilute something creating a solution. Water can dissolve a variety of different compounds, that’s why we use it so much: we use it to wash ourselves or our clothes, because in itself water can already dissolve a lot of dirt. We use it as a solvent for our coffee and tea – it dissolves the special chemicals from the coffee beans or tea leaves and gives us a delicious hot beverage (winkwink #TBBT).

Fact 2: Boiling water is a very efficient disinfectant – or isn’t it?

You often see disinfectant sprays, gels or soaps that use certain chemicals and are supposed to help you keep your house “clean”. Firstly let me tell you one thing: your house should be clean, but it does not need to be sterile! Actually being too clean may be harmful to your health – basically your immune system needs to be trained to recognize what is harmful or harmless to you. Most of the bacteria and microorganisms in our surroundings are harmless to us, and don’t require our body to go into full defensive mode. But how is your body to know the difference if it has never been in contact with them ( yes, this means let your kids play in the dirt!).
 
Actually some microorganisms in our environment can be very good for us e.g. probiotic bacteria in our food. Nevertheless, sometimes you need to be sure that something has been properly cleaned, such as your kitchen surfaces when you worked with raw chicken. Again: clean does not mean sterile. A chemical disinfectant may do the job, but why use potentially harmful chemicals when soap and water also do the trick. In most of our everyday lives, we actually don’t want to kill harmful bacteria, just remove them. Scientists have also recently found out that all of these anti-bacterial soaps do more harm than good. Firstly they do not help clean your hands more than soap and water, and some of them contribute to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria (e.g. Triclosan). 
 
While cleaning a surface, using a detergent like normal dish soap with hot water is usually good enough to get everything nice and clean – often you just want to remove the germs and not kill them. Doing you laundry at 60°C should also wash away any harmful microorganisms e.g. if you or your baby have been sick or have had a runny tummy (For another interesting article, click here).
 
Of course boiling water can be used to kill microorganisms, however you will have to ensure a high temperature for a certain amount of time to guarantee decontamination. And how are you to use boiling water to clean your house without burning your hands? I personally just recently discovered the joys of a steamcleaner (*affiliate link)! That certainly will take care of some of your bacteria, and protect the environment, as you will reduce the use of strong chemicals:) I am so happy I bought that cleaner! Don’t get me wrong, you still need to take the time and energy to clean, but man is it efficient at things that you usually don’t do – like I cleaned the bathroom tiles within 5 minutes or less! Already now worth every penny!! 

Fact 3: Adding salt to water increases its boiling point and lowers its freezing point.

This one got me for a long time 😀 I read that salt is added to the water while boiling pasta to reduce the cooking time as it increases the boiling temperature. This is only partially true: Yes! Adding salt to water actually increases it’s boiling temperature, but only a little. Salt is actually added more for flavor than anything else. Adding salt to water also reduces its freezing temperature, which is why we use salt in winter to defrost the streets and why this stops working when temperatures get too low.
 
Salting the ground makes ice melt, leading to a highly concentrated salt-water mixture with a reduced freezing point. If you want to know more, check out this video. Salt has many wonderful properties: it makes ice melt and makes our food taste better! But use it wisely as it is damaging to the environment and to you in large doses!

Fact 4: The boiling temperature of water varies according to the outside pressure.

Ok now this one is a bitch! You might have heard that mountain climbers observe that the water boils at a lower temperature or that their food takes longer to cook? Also you might remember that food cooks quicker in a pressure cooker. Also depending on your altitude, you need to boil water longer to kill harmful bacteria? What is the principle behind this? If you are interested in the exact physical details click here.

It all has to do with something called “vapor pressure”. Above the liquid’s surface, there is always a little bit of that liquid that has evaporated. The higher the temperature, the more vapor you have. At a boiling temperature, the vapor pressure equals the atmospheric pressure. So if you climb a mountain, the atmospheric pressure is smaller and hence the boiling point is reduced (at the boiling point : vapor pressure = atmospheric pressure). When you use a pressure cooker, you increase the surrounding pressure, thereby increasing vapor pressure of the contained liquid and the boiling point of said liquid. I hope that makes sense:) If not, here is a video!

I hope you enjoyed this:) Check out some more articles from the bubbly biochemist here and certainly let me know what you think 🙂 Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter and get all the news from Milly’s Melting Pot!

 

 

you might also like

Evolution in everyday life

What’s your environmental impact?

In Europe we are lucky to have Traditional European Medicine, which primarily deals with local plants and their medicinal benefits.

Traditional European Medicine – Ayurveda of the Alps

Leave a Response

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.