Can the tempature of water go above 212 f?
Water is commonly found above 212f… it is called steam.
If you are referring to water in a liquid state above 212f, then yes, microwave ovens can superheat a cup of water above 212f.
water boils at various temperatures depending upon the pressure. At low pressure it boils at a lower temperature and at high pressure at high temperature.
At normal atmospheric pressure, 14.7 lb/in[sup]2[/sup] liquid water can’t go above 212 F. Water vapor can be at higher temperatures.
And to add to what The Controvert wrote about superheated water there is this.
Water can also be supercooled below 32 F if it is very still. Apparently there needs to be just a little turbulence in order to have the normal boiling and freezing points hold.
This statement is incorrect as water is, by definition, in it’s liquid state. Is there a limit to water you can superheat water to?
I used to teach the “Principles of Steam Generation” many years ago. Yes there is an endpoint, but I don’t recall what it is. I think it’s around 1300 degrees fahrenheit, but that’s a dim memory and I’m not going to guarantee it.
Well then let me rephrase my original question. If I stick my thermometer in a pot of boiling water and it reads 223 f, is it time for me to get a new thermometer?
Not necessarily.
If you are below sea level, there is unusually high atmospheric pressure, or you are on the surface of a planet with more gravity, then water will boil hotter.
See above.
I don’t think so. The colloquial definition of water may be that of the liquid state, but you’re asking a scientific question, so the formal defintion would apply, wherein steam is water (as is ice).
Am I right in thinking you mean by the graped comment that a planet with higher gravity would typically have higher atmospheric pressure at the surface? Because on a planet with higher gravity and (for whatever reason)little or no atmosphere, water will **not ** boil hotter.
This is why cooking in the mountains takes longer. On top of a mountain, with lower atmospheric pressure, water boils at, say, 200F, which means your rice needs to cook longer.
I’d then guess that if you are in a submarine (hmmm…? What are the internal pressures of those things?) or maybe at the bottom of a very deep pit the water will boil at slightly higher, say 215F.
-Tcat
In some cases, cooking is difficult or impossible, because water needs to do more than bubble vigorously in order to cook the food - it needs to actually get hot.
If you are an altitude of 10000 ft. water boils at about 150 F if my standard atmosphere calculator and boiling point curves are accurate.
This is precisely what a pressure cooker is for. Pressurise the water and you can get it to stay liquid at a higher temperature; and higher temperatures cook things quicker.
Thanks… hmmm… about 65C - so it might work OK for something like pasta or instant soup, but cooking raw proteins (say, boiling an egg, or poaching a piece of fish) at that temperature is not going to work very well.
Was it salty water?
Yeah. In order to get enough fuel to cook that long you would probably need to clear the brush off a couple of acres. And I think sausage, for example, needs to be hotter than that in the interior to be safe.
Doing some extrapolation from this chart and from this cite I get the boiling point at the lowest point on earth being about 215F. You get about 1 degree increase each 500ft below sea level, the shores of the Dead Sea are about 1300ft below sea level. If you have a strong high pressure system over you, that may add another degree or two.
If you’re reading 223F, using plain water, on the surface of the planet, you need a new thermometer.
Unless something has gone terribly wrong, 1 atmosphere.
ISTR that early explorers (Lewis & Clark?) used the temperature of boiling water as a crude sort of altimeter.