Boffins is having a bit of a sale

[samvara]

And will continue to do so for about a week. By which I mean to say they are casting off things people haven't bought yet. It's an eclectic mix, if you have a sudden urge to own the Last 200 Years of Earrings, various psych texts, The New Chihuahua or a smattering of history, geology or science you might find something to love.

Me, I went in to collect Pride and Promiscuity and I found this!

How to Dunk a Doughnut; the Science of Everyday Life"

"In 1998, Len Fisher attracted media attention around the world with his experiments on the physics of biscuit dunking. His studies resulted in the receipt of a spoof "IgNobel Prize" award, a letter of commendation from the Government Chief Scientist, and a nomination by The Times newspaper as an 'Enemy of the People'"

It has a discussion of the laws of thermodynamics and egg boiling, am going to use it on doofus after his amusing and very dodgy attempt to explain the difference between his mother's egg boiling time and his own was due to genetically engineered chickens designed to lay slow boiling eggs.

Comments

[cricketk.livejournal.com]

Tell ME all about the thermodynamics and the egg boiling.

I still want to boil an egg at high altitude to see if I can have a warm raw egg while perfectly obeying every rule in the CWA cookbook.

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

OK.

Dodgy egg boiling science revealed.

The temperature the white cooks at is 63C and the yolk cooks at 68C. So ideally if you cooked an egg at 65C you could get a 'perfect' soft boiled egg.

The vapour pressure of pure water at 65C is 25.022 kPa.

The atmospheric pressure at sea level is generally taken to be 101.3 kPa,

The change of pressure at increasing altitudes is kinda interesting, and several charts are available, but rest assured you're going to have to be over 30,000 meters above sea level to get the pressure down to 25 kPa.

The air pressure on Mt Everest is approximately 33.7kPa.

Since Mount Everest is 8.850m and K2 is 8.611m I can see two possible problems.

1. No mountain big enough.
2. No air.

However: Technology.

1. Buy a hotplate with a decent temperature gauge.
2. Boil egg in vacuum bell and control pressure.

Not as exciting as having a warm raw egg on a mountaintop I know, but we could dress up!

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/CDHW/egg/