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

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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

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine you want to jump. Unfortunately for you you have a backpack on weighing 50 kilos. This makes it pretty hard, and takes a lot of effort to do.

Now imagine that weight gets reduced to 20 kilos. It’s still pretty difficult, but way easier than before and you don’t have to put in as much energy to do it.

By going up you decrease atmospheric pressure that is “squishing” the water into its liquid state, and so it takes less energy to overcome it with heat.

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