Re: How to explain this?

[Dan MacIsaac <Dan.MacIsaac@NAU.EDU>]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2003, at 11:15 AM, Mark Lucas wrote:
> This is an issue of superheating.
>
> A google search on "superheated boiling" brought up the second link as:
>
> http://newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem00/chem00636.htm
>
> On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:
> > About ten seconds later I took a spoon (at room temperature)
> > and immersed it into the cup. That resulted in a sudden rise of
> > foam with milk and some of my coffee was spilled. How can this
> > be explained? Why did placing a cold spoon into the hot coffee-
> > milk produce a sudden boiling-like =93explosion?=94 I have never
> > seen anything like this.
> > Ludwik Kowalski
Superheated boiling has also been discussed extensively on PHYS-L;
search the archives at
<http://mailgate1.nau.edu/archives/phys-l.html> for "superheated".
This is a real safety issue
with liquids microwaved in ceramic containers.

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College
222SCIE BSC, 1300 Elmwood Ave , Buffalo NY 14222 USA 716-878-3802
<macisadl@buffalostate.edu>  <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.edu>