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August 1, 2019 at 12:30 am #17322
What happens to the boiling point of water when you add salt?
[See the full post at: Daily Quiz for August 1, 2019]
August 1, 2019 at 6:47 am #17323Clearly the information a friend gave me years ago is WRONG, so my losing streak continues, but I am now correctly informed.
August 1, 2019 at 8:04 am #17324Missed it.
August 5, 2019 at 12:33 pm #17369Sorry I'm so late responding to this. I chose the right answer. When I make pasta, I never add salt to the water until it starts boiling. The addition of salt at that stage makes the water boil harder. The reason I don't add salt to the water right out the gate is because of an article I read. It said that if you add the salt at the beginning, it will take longer for the salt to boil. Anyone know if this is true & why?
August 5, 2019 at 1:42 pm #17371It appears the opposite is true, adding salt to water makes it boil faster, but not enough so to make much difference.
I remember my college chemistry professor, L Carroll King, spending most of a lecture on what happens when you boil something. He was legendary at Northwestern for his intro to chemistry lectures. For one lecture, there were two large balloons floating in the room. He told us one contained hydrogen and the other helium and challenged us to suggest ways to tell which was which. After going through a variety of methods, like releasing them to see which went to the ceiling of the large lecture hall faster (hard to tell), he said there was another easier way. He then took a long metal tube, attached it to the gas with a piece of rubber tubing, lit the gas, and touched the flame to the two balloons. One of them went BOOM!, of course. Class dismissed with a bang!
Boiling water is more complicated than it seems, the amount of dissolved minerals impacts the rate at which the water absorbs heat and the boiling point, and the the pressure at the bottom of the pot, which is a combination of the atmospheric pressure and the depth of the water is also a factor. A wide pot will boil faster than a narrower pot with the same amount of water in it, though the size of the pot also affects how much heat is transferred to it from the stove.
This article does a good job of explaining things, though it doesn't really go into why adding salt makes the water seem to boil harder. As I recall, it isn't that it's boiling harder, it's that it has smaller air bubbles due to the presence of the additional minerals, which make it seem more active. (The same thing happens if you add baking soda to a pot of boiling water.)
August 6, 2019 at 7:45 pm #17401Thanks, Mike, for your informative post on this subject!
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