You're a Bunch of Factors

The link below has one of the most amazing charts I have ever seen.
It is vaguely related to the BP oil disaster frequenting our news at the moment.
It starts of with facts about our planet from 36000ft in the sky and works it's way down to 35000ft deep in the ocean. Yup amazing stuff.
Amazing Chart

the bit that i found most interesting about that chart was the "time it takes to boil an egg" stats

so i did a bit of googling

water boils at a lower temperature at high altitute, because there is less pressure pushing down on the water and holding the chemical bonds together.

in practical terms, it would take even longer, because of a couple of things. first, if you are burning a gas stove, it isn't going to burn as hot because there is less oxygen in the air.

secondly, less air pressure means that the molecules of air are further apart. which means they are less efficient at transferring heat to each other (heat is generated by the vibration of molecules of water/gas).

at the top of mount everest, water boils at 75 degrees C.

never thought about the changing boiling point before, but it makes sense.

good work old man Swanky.

Cool chart man.

Yeah the egg thing got me to benny the cunt.
I really liked this thing.

had a tech night at my dive club last night - speak had recently dived 130m!

yeah, pressure is a wonderful thing!

bennymacca wrote:the bit that i found most interesting about that chart was the "time it takes to boil an egg" stats

so i did a bit of googling

water boils at a lower temperature at high altitute, because there is less pressure pushing down on the water and holding the chemical bonds together.

in practical terms, it would take even longer, because of a couple of things. first, if you are burning a gas stove, it isn't going to burn as hot because there is less oxygen in the air.

secondly, less air pressure means that the molecules of air are further apart. which means they are less efficient at transferring heat to each other (heat is generated by the vibration of molecules of water/gas).

at the top of mount everest, water boils at 75 degrees C.

never thought about the changing boiling point before, but it makes sense.

good work old man Swanky.

I think they use an electric stove on top of everest.

Why can't you hard boil an egg on the top of Mount Everest?

yahoo answers wrote:Because due to the low air pressure, the gas stove cannot burn efficiently to generate enough heat. The stove needs a mixture of gas and air to burn to a high temperature. Therefoe due to the low air pressure, all the stove can burn is the heat of a candle flame.

lots of other ways to make heat than by combustion

resistive heating with an electric stove is one, as matthew suggested.

you could also mix 2 chemicals and get an exothermic reaction going

other types of radiation can also be used to heat things. (i.e other than infra red) the best example of this is using microwaves, another is lasers.

Another is shut the fuck up.

if we are talking just about heating water, it is all about the equations of phase transitions. i.e a liquid will turn from a liquid to a gas (boil) along certain curves of pressure and temperature, and back again.

generally, the more pressure, the harder it will be to boil something, and higher the temperature, the easier it is to boil. the relationship is not linear, but there are equations that govern it. i cant really explain it more than that, because i didn't pay that much attention in therodynamics at uni, it was one of the subjects that didnt interest me much.

another good example of the phase transition/pressure thing is propane gas.

at room temperature, it is a gas, but when you put it in a bottle, i.e compress or pressurise it, it changes state into a liquid.


this gets complicated by the phenomenon called latent heat. latent heat is the amount of energy required for a substance to change state.

maccatak11 wrote:Another is shut the **** up.

should have waited till i finished typing this post as well
if you cool water down very slowly, gradually lowering the temperature, you can actually keep it in its liquid form, but get it to a point where its temperature is lower than 0 degrees, because the water hasn't lost enough energy to change state into ice yet.


sorry for nerding that up a bit, but i find it interesting