M.Ed., George Washington University
Dept. chair at a high school
Matt is currently the department chair at a high school in San Francisco. In his spare time, Matt enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife and two kids.
Boiling is the transition of a substance from the liquid to gaseous state of matter. When a liquid boils, its vapor pressure equals the atmospheric pressure. At high altitudes, liquids boil at a much lower temperature because there is less atmospheric pressure acting upon them.
Boiling, boiling is phase change to change from one state of matter to another in this case the matter changes from liquid form to gas form and it does this when it gets enough kinetic energy where the molecules are moving fast enough where they can basically build enough space to become a gas and that point we call a boiling point that amount of energy so let's look at some factors that can influence the boiling point.
If we got say you've got a part of water and we're applying a lot of energy to it those molecules are going to start to move faster and faster and faster and when they reach a certain amount of kinetic energy they're going to have enough energy enough pressure where they're going to become gas and that's when you start to see the bubbles forming in the pot and those bubbles are going to get bigger and collect with other bubbles and you're going to see the formation the bubbles you see in a boiling liquid are actually the water vapor escaping from the pot okay.
Well there some some factors that can affect the boiling point; one thing is the pressure that's causing us water molecules will become liquid can be countered if we have more pressure on here and apply pressure we can actually prevent the boiling from occurring so if you've ever cook with a pressure cooker pressure cooker basically increases the pressure as you're cooking and what that does is that allows the container or the water in the container to go above water's boiling point of 100 degrees Celsius and this cooks food a lot faster.
Other factors that can affect it are lowering the pressure so let's say we have less pressure in this case let's say we're up in Denver a mile above sea level where there's a lot less atmospheric pressure in this case, that water will actually start to boil at a lower temperature at 95 degrees Celsius as opposed to a 100 which means that if you're cooking food you really want it to reach a certain temperature and amount of energy and it reaches that boiling point it's going to stop and its not going to increase any more because all the energy is now being used to convert the liquid molecules into gas so it's harder to cook food you have to cook food longer at high elevations because the lower pressure means that it's going to boil at a lower temperature and you'll see this sometimes when you're looking at recipes if they'll talk about high elevations require longer cooking times and it's due to that lower pressure.
