Superheating of water (Mythbusters)

razorlalalala Says:

Nov 5, 2009 - LOL. nice question. its sold everywhere....

MercheFunebre Says:

Nov 5, 2009 - this just happened to me... nearly scared the shit outa me

hex37 Says:

Nov 8, 2009 - when it cools off, the energy in the water has left, so it does nothing.

meantexanguy Says:

Nov 9, 2009 - you buy it off the shelves in ANY store, it comes in jugs, it just has distilled on the label all it means is that it has no impurities

4455336 Says:

Nov 9, 2009 - ooh cool thanks.

meantexanguy Says:

Nov 10, 2009 - not a prob bro

BAMLOKI Says:

Nov 14, 2009 - It is not recommended to drink destilletd water. It can damage your body. Just put a cherry into destilled water and wait a few hours. See what happens to the cherry and then imagine what would happen to your body if you drank 2 L of destilled water a day. Actually, destilled water is supposed to be used for devices like irons that can be destroyed by "regular" water because it may includes big amounts of calcium carbonite ( lime) .

alexisSHAINAxD Says:

Nov 14, 2009 - i just boiled water in my microwave im scared to take it out. guess im not having tea today

Exitus767 Says:

Nov 14, 2009 - Cool, I'm going to have to try that. I begs another question though. After the cherry disintegrates, will it be safe to drink?

BAMLOKI Says:

Nov 14, 2009 - It definitely will be safer than without the cherry in it. :) See, the problem with most liquids that are supposed to be drunk by humans is that they are not isotonic. That means they do not have the ideal amount of minerals or other particles e.g. sugar and all other things that are in drinks exept water. You can imagine that destilled water ( speaking water without any particles in it at all) is an extreme and is unnatural. If you want to know more about it search wikipedia for "osmosis".

BAMLOKI Says:

Nov 14, 2009 - By the way, I don't believe the cherry will desintegrate after a few hours because its structures are far too stable but it certainly will grow up. Anyway, don't try to grow other things up that way, I bet it won't work^^ As comparison you should put a cherry into water with a bit of sugar dissolved in it ( amount depends on the volume of water) and one cherry into a pile of sugar. This will simulate what happens, if you only drink hypertonic stuff ( =higher particle density than in the cells).

BAMLOKI Says:

Nov 14, 2009 - *I'm sorry, it has to be "hypotonic" in my last post. hypotonic = the solution (drink) has a higher concentration of particles than the cells isotonic = the solution and the cells have the same concentration of particles (optimum) hypertonic = the solution has a lower concentration of particles than the cells

Freddy3740 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Hahaha.

pchapman905 Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Where I grew up in Halifax, the tap water was pure enough that this could happen. If you're not sure, give the glass a tap with a spoon to set it off.

TheStockAim Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Its crazy. The reason why i searched this topic now. is that it just happened to me now. No kidding. i usally heat water for tea into a coffee cup. But since there werent any left i used a glass. I set the timer to 2 min. That as i was watching. The water didnt start boiling. So i set another 2 min. and all of the sudden. The microwave exploded and it just opened. And the glass was fine. Water just sprinkled all over. It scared the hell outa me.

fakeyoutv Says:

Nov 16, 2009 - Hahahah fer sure

nynaiqmal Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - what happened to the cherry??????

baconator490 Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - this only happens with distilled water. if your using tap water its fine.

mysticalfairymagic Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - haha, I exploded water with tap water once... Mom probably put a filter in I didn't know about. I'm lucky that I wasn't holding the cup and that it was the hot-coco powder that made it explode.

Jimbo1920 Says:

Nov 19, 2009 - I've had it happen to me with bottled water. Heated up a glass of bottled water for tea, sprinkled in some sugar and BOOM. Exploding water. I assume the bottled water is very pure.

hockeylover7171 Says:

Nov 19, 2009 - they usually say confirmed not true

sbuttgereit Says:

Nov 21, 2009 - Your statement is incorrect. About 10 minutes ago I, first hand, unintentionally recreated this with good old San Francisco tap water. I poured water straight from our kitchen sink tap into a largish mug, microwaved it for three minutes, took it out and added some drink mix: upon contact more than half the water violently bubbled out of mug onto surrounding surfaces. I suspect that it is harder to duplicate with tap water, but people should not assume that it cannot happen with tap water.

1xXitachiXx1 Says:

Nov 22, 2009 - this could turn into a seriously evil prank ;p

baconator490 Says:

Nov 22, 2009 - if you boil water for a certain amount of time the inpurities boil off and you get much cleaner water. thats probably what happened to you. think of it like surivival guys boiling water to kill diseases in the water

sbuttgereit Says:

Nov 22, 2009 - I doubt this is what happened. Once the boiling process begins, I would expect the dissolved minerals and salts, rather than boiling off, to in fact become more concentrated as the water itself boiled off thus making the remaining water less pure, not more pure. More likely is that I'm not exceeding 100c by very much. The lower relative energy means that the tiny impurities in tap water are too small to serve as nucleation sites until the water temperature exceeds 100c by a sufficient amount.