Science boils water without bubbles!

When I first saw the headlines for this story, I was expecting something different. Well I'm not sure what I expected, but this is still pretty damn cool.

Liedenfrost effect

is a phenomenon in which a liquid, in near contact with a mass significantly hotter than the liquid's boiling point, produces an insulating vapor layer which keeps that liquid from boiling rapidly. This is most commonly seen when cooking; one sprinkles drops of water in a skillet to gauge its temperature—if the skillet's temperature is at or above the Leidenfrost point, the water skitters across the metal and takes longer to evaporate than it would in a skillet that is above boiling temperature, but below the temperature of the Leidenfrost point.

Here is a video demonstrating the Leidenfrost effect with a clothes iron.

“We thought we could improve the transition” from the Leidenfrost regime to bubbling, says Vakarelski, “but we are not only lowering the transition, we are completely avoiding it”. “It was really dramatic,” says Neelesh Patankar, a theoretical mechanical engineer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a co-author of the paper. “As the temperature goes down, this vapour phase nicely settles down.”

Here is the video asociated with this study/experiment.


Like I said, pretty neat.

The researchers think that this could help to reduce damage to surfaces, help prevent bubbling explosions and could eventually be useful as a way to “enhance heat transfer equipment, reduce drag on ships and lead to anti-frost technologies.”

Links to this story:
blog.chron
Scientific American
newscientist
Planetsave

What do you folks think?

reply to post by watchitburn


It is pretty damn cool, i like these threads no bs just the facts .. i can't wait to see
what's next with the way we are advancing in this world..

reply to post by denver22


Thanks, I'm glad you thought it was cool too.

Here is a thread I posted a bit ago about advances in technology with possible repercussions Reaching brain capacity.. You might find it interesting.

reply to post by watchitburn

It's an interesting effect but a misleading headline, as both sides of the video clearly show bubbles when the water boils, so they aren't boiling water without bubbles as the headlines claim. This is no criticism of you of course since you didn't pick the headline, but I do find it a little bit annoying.

However I like the story because like the researchers, I wouldn't have expected they could extend the temperature range of the Leidenfrost effect as low as they did, so I suppose we are all surprised by this result which is more than they were expecting too. It's nice to find some surprises once in a while!

He is right, the water does not boil, and science is not boiling water. Its a physic law and so its natural.

This is nothing new. Microwave ovens are able to super heat water past boiling - depending on the type of container the water is in, the water ( at or over the boiling point) won't produce bubbles..

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
This is nothing new. Microwave ovens are able to super heat water past boiling - depending on the type of container the water is in, the water ( at or over the boiling point) won't produce bubbles..

That's true about microwave ovens and that's what I thought the subject of the thread would be from the title. But the title is wrong, and that's not the subject of this thread. And thus, this is in fact new as far as I know.

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
This is nothing new. Microwave ovens are able to super heat water past boiling - depending on the type of container the water is in, the water ( at or over the boiling point) won't produce bubbles..

edit on 14-9-2012 by JohnPhoenix because: sp

I thought it was about superheating too before I entered the thread. Although superheated water will form some vigorous bubbles once it comes into contact with something.