Friday, October 29, 2010
Does adding salt to water make it boil faster?
Nope, not a bit. In fact, adding salt raises the boiling point of water, so it will take slightly longer to boil, on the order of a couple milliseconds. This has a lot to do with thermodynamics (enthalpy, entropy, specific heat capacity, partial differential equations, etc.) but I won't bore you with the details. Salt will flavor whatever you're boiling, but it won't decrease the time it takes to boil.
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Wouldn't this mean that the cooking time would be decreased slightly because of the increased temperature of the water?
ReplyDeleteScience Lady here - yes, the cooking time would decrease very slightly when you add salt. Altitude (pressure) has a bigger impact on water boiling temperature and hence cooking time. When we camp up at 10,000-12,000 feet in the mountains, it can take a very, very long time to cook pasta or rice because water boils at approximately 190 F, as opposed to 212 F at sea level.
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