Kind of a weird tangent but can anyone elaborate on this quote: "trap a drop of water between two other liquids and heat it, you can raise the temperature to at least 300 °C with nothing happening"
I knew you could change boiling point with pressure but is this suggesting that doing something like having a layer of oil on top of an ambient pressure pot of water would prevent boiling? I tried googling for some elaboration but only found discussions of superheating water via pressure changes.
I'm not sure of the experiment that this might be referring to, but it sounds like superheating[0]. Trapping the drop of water between two other liquids could be some version of a "clean container, free of nucleation sites" as described in the first paragraph of the wikipedia article. Other ideas?
I knew you could change boiling point with pressure but is this suggesting that doing something like having a layer of oil on top of an ambient pressure pot of water would prevent boiling? I tried googling for some elaboration but only found discussions of superheating water via pressure changes.