Why does adding water to boiling oil cause an explosion but nothing happens when adding oil to boiling water?

Question

Why does adding water to boiling oil cause an explosion but nothing happens when adding oil to boiling water?

In: 200

Answer 1

Imagine you heat oil to 150ºC. It doesn’t boil, but it’s really hot. Now you pour water on it. The water heats above 100ºC really, really fast. So fast that it’s an explosion, which is just gasses expanding really fast.

Now, you heat up water to 100ºC. Now you pour oil on it. The oil heats up to 100 degrees really fast, but it doesn’t turn into gas, so it doesn’t explode.