PHYSICISTS have finally figured out how water boils.
Water has a high boiling point because of the energy it takes to break the network of hydrogen bonds holding together the water molecules. When water is heated, these bonds break randomly, sometimes forcing the hydrogen bonds to reorganise themselves in a way that creates a cavity devoid of any water molecules.
It was thought that as the temperature rises and more bonds are broken, the cavity expands until the network of hydrogen bonds is destroyed and water molecules escape as steam, but no one had confirmed it.
Now Dirk Zahn of…
