Why does adding water to boiling oil cause an explosion but nothing happens when adding oil to boiling water?
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Boiling oil is much hotter than boiling water. Add water to boiling oil, it sinks to the bottom and rapidly turns into steam. The steam expands quickly and turns the very hot oil into a mist, and the tiny droplets of already hot oil are easy to ignite if they get near an open flame (and if one catches fire, its close neighbors will to, and suddenly the whole mist of oil catches).
If you add oil to boiling water, the water is much cooler than the oil and the oil floats on top of it like a raft. Rather than all the water turning to steam very quickly, you get pockets of steam that rise up and push the oil aside. The steam doesn’t explode out turning the oil to a mist and there’s much less chance of the oil catching fire, unless it sloshes over the side of the container and drips into the flame. Even then, instead of millions of tiny fireballs hurtling through the air, you have a puddle of oil that takes time to heat up and catch fire.
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