Why does water take less time to boil at higher elevation?

Question

I get there’s less and less air pressure the closer you get to sea level, and therefore it requires less energy for water to boil, but how does air pressure correlate to energy? I have a tendency to think about things at the molecular level, and can’t seem to work this one out in my head.

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

There’s *more* pressure the closer you get to sea level. So the further from sea level the air pressure goes down, the less tightly the molecules are being packed, and the lower the boiling temperature.