Why does adding water to boiling oil cause an explosion but nothing happens when adding oil to boiling water?
In: 200
Two big reasons: Oil boils at a higher temperature than water, and oil floats on water.
If you have a pot of boiling water, it’s 212 degrees (100 C), and adding oil just puts some hot, but not nearly boiling, oil, floating on top of the water. That might splash a bit, and make a mess, but it’s not really dangerous.
If you have a pot of boiling oil, it’s around 570 degrees (300 C), and if you put water in it, the water sinks *and* boils at the same time. It boils very fast, because the oil is much, much hotter than the boiling point of water. That creates steam at the *bottom* of the oil. A lot of steam. A given volume of water makes about 1700 times that volume of steam. That’s like a teaspoon of water becoming 10 liters of steam. That steam pushes the oil up and out, like an explosion.
Now, that oil is still really hot, and a lot of stuff, like cloth, paper, and even wood, can burn if it hits them. The oil can catch on fire, too, so now you have a mess of hot, burning oil flying around your kitchen, setting stuff on fire.
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