How Do Bamboo Spoons Prevent Boil Overs??

[heat123]

Thanks for the tip of the day! I love learning some other uses for our products!

 

[straitfan]

I was making pasta last night and happened to remember this thread and tried it. I was AMAZED that it really did work. Thanks Debbie for the Cooking 4Dummies explaination of WHY!

 

[hperschnick]

My mom always puts a wooden spoon across her pots to prevent boiling over. I never thought to ask for a reason - I have a show tonight... guess what one of my tips for the night will be... thanks for this.

 

[JAE]

I tried this with my oatmeal. It didn't seem to be working, so I picked the pan up before it spilled over. I was really hoping this would work. I hate it when my oatmeal spills onto my flat stove top. It's such a pain to clean up sticky oatmeal.

 

[PCGINA]

Never heard this before...I'm going to have to give it a try!

Me too!!! I hope it works - would be a nice little tid bit to pass on to customers.

 

[peichef]

hmmm....interesting....

Scientific Explanation: Boiling point is the temperature at which a liquid bubbles and changes into vapor. At this temperature, the vapor pressure (the pressure exerted by the vapor) equals the atmospheric pressure. The motion of vapor molecules produces the vapor pressure, which rises as the temperature of the liquid rises. The lower the atmospheric pressure is, the lower is the temperature needed to produce a vapor pressure equal to the atmospheric pressure. So the boiling point of any substance depends on the atmospheric pressure.
And if you introduce a foreign body into the mix then some of the energy that would be used to help something boil faster is then diverted to heating up the foreign body to help it gain the same temperature as the rest of the mixture.

:cry:

Basically it takes a certain amount of energy for something to boil. When you put the bamboo spoon in, then part of the energy is used to try to heat the bamboo spoon up to the same temperature as everything else. Since the energy is reduced it will then take longer to reach the point where it would boil over. Also because wood is a very poor conductor of electricity it can take a very long while before it will reach the boiling over point. The reason you can still have boil over is you have the oven too HOT or your have cooked it too long and it finally gains enough energy to spill a gooey mess all over your clean stove.

So why does it work when you place the spoon ACROSS the top of the not NOT IN the pot!?!?!?!?!

 

[peichef]

thanks

I just read on the internet that wooden spoons across the top of a pot prevent spill overs because it seperates the steam and prevents the boil over!

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=1454387

http://www.alicorne.com/information.htm

Debbie

Now my next question... where did you find the answer? I gave up my search ages ago. though I was searching bamboo, not wood. might have had more luck with a "wood" search
thanks for the answer