#BoilingWater #KitchenTips #CookingHacks
Have you ever noticed that when you leave a pot of water boiling by itself, it just bubbles away peacefully? But as soon as you toss in pasta or chai mix, it seems like your pot has a mind of its own and suddenly boils over, creating quite the mess? 🤔
Here’s a quick breakdown of why that happens:
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Surface Tension: When water is boiling alone, bubbles form and rise to the surface, popping without much hassle. Adding ingredients disrupts this smooth surface, contributing to those rebellious bubbles.
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Changes in Composition: When you add something like pasta, the starches and ingredients can create a foam that holds onto air. This foam rises and makes the boiling water overflow.
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Temperature and Agitation: High heat increases bubble formation. With food in the pot, you’re adding extra agitation which can push those bubbles higher, leading to a boil-over.
- Volume Increase: Pasta and chai mix absorb water and release gases, which can cause an increase in volume, contributing to that dramatic spillage fun.
It’s a bit of chaos in the kitchen! 😅
So, what do you think? Have you encountered this pot overflow situation? Do you have any handy tips to prevent this? Maybe you have a favorite technique for cooking pasta or chai without making a mess? Share your experiences—I’m all ears! 🙌
Boiling those things in water causes ingredients to leech into the water, like starch from pastas.
Those added things increase the surface tension on the water allowing bubbles to form and not immediately pop. The bubbles build up on top of each other until they flow over the side of the pot.
Regular water doesn’t form bubbles very well and they ussually pop quickly. So the bubbles pop before they can build up.
so when water boils it turns into steam and takes up more space. adding stuff like pasta or chai mix makes it bubble more. the bubbles can’t escape fast enough and boom it spills. chemistry at work man
Water doesn’t boil over. Steam creates bubbles but the bubbles quickly collapse.
However, add stuff that changes the physical properties of the water and the bubbles can persist and stack on each other until the water “boils over” the pot.
There are various ways to favour bubble formation.
At the macro level, lower surface tension or higher viscosity both work (soap vastly decreases surface tension, pasta starch increases viscosity without much changing tension).
At the micro level you might want to Google “micellar aggregation” which demonstrates how amphiphilic molecules like soap help support structures like bubbles in water. In brief: amphiphilic molecules are long rods with one end attracted to water and the other repelled, they can line up on the surface of water with their hydrophobic arse in the air. A thin bubble surface can have these molecules on both sides of the surface and collapsing the bubble forces the hydrophobic ends back into the water which is energetically unfavourable.
when water boils it has bubbles forming at the bottom that rise to the surface. when you add something like pasta those bubbles get trapped which makes the water spill over. it’s like a bubble party that goes outta control. it’s fun to watch just not so fun to clean up