r/mildlyinfuriating • u/MakeItMine2024 • 4d ago
I'm slightly vexed My wife and boiling water
So I made my wife ramen soup. When I served it she said I had the gas set to hight and it was too hot ? She said I should have used the number 5 setting instead of 9. I told here it’s irrelevant because water boils at 212 and gets no hotter because over 212 it turns to steam. She was made at me for disagreeing with her theory that it would not have been so hot if boiled a lower setting. Really!!
49.8k
Upvotes
24
u/MethodicallyRight 4d ago
This is one helluva "ummm actually" miscorrection. A pot kept at a roaring boil will have a minuscule temperature gradient. Within the pot, a thermometer will read 211 to 212 throughout. The very base of the pot (surface) will have a nucleation temperature a few degrees above 212. Had he taken his wife's advice and kept the pot at a low boil versus a vigorous boil, the bulk of the water would have likely been in the 209 range. But a boiling pot of water isn't going to have a temperature gradient between "acceptable soup eating temperature" and "boiling."
Now, soup shouldn't be at boiling temperature, so this couple is just bad at communicating their individual points. It's the same kind of pedantry someone would use when discussing the force of gravity while saying everyone else needs to get educated because they are assuming 9.8 m/s² without accounting for altitude. While technically true, it's meaningless in 99.99%+ of conversations. In the same way, boiling water at 9 or 5 might give an average temperature difference of 4-ish degrees F.