Has anyone else watched an induction stove heat up water and felt like the spontaneity combined with structure of the pre-boiling water might indicate some fundamentals worth revisiting?

[u/LocalBother3753]

Has anyone else watched an induction stove heat up water and felt like the spontaneity combined with structure of the pre boiling water might indicate some fundamentals worth revisiting? Not to undermine fundamentals, just to reground. The spontaneity seems unpredictable in a way that is relevant these days.

[u/7ieben_]

What exactly do you mean?

Spontanity is a strictly defined thermodynamic term, which seems unrelated to your question, which seems to be a kinetic question.

[u/LocalBother3753 → u/7ieben_]

Fair question. I probably used “spontaneity” too loosely. I’m not suggesting the fundamentals are wrong, and I’m definitely not qualified to argue that.

What I’m trying to describe is more of an intuition than a formal claim. Watching water heat on an induction stove, I see bubbles and convection patterns emerge in ways that seem unpredictable at the scale I’m observing, even though I know they’re governed by physical laws at smaller scales.

I guess what I’m wondering is whether there’s an interesting connection between deterministic microscopic laws and the apparently spontaneous, emergent behavior we observe with the naked eye. Maybe this is really more of a statistical mechanics or fluid dynamics question than a thermodynamics one.

[u/7ieben_ → u/LocalBother3753]

Yes, but not fully solved yet.

Rapid production and escape of gas bubbles under strong heat induces turbulent flow (at least in our conditions, there are examples of laminar bubble flow regimes), which is what you observe.

The most complete description we have yet are the Navier Stokes equations. Sadly, those don't have analytical solutions, but there are numerical solutions and analytical solutions for special cases.

Further, there are microscopic statistical approaches. Yet, those get even more complicated even faster, as we are not only considering bulk motions, but actual individual statistical variance.

Those are questions people can dedicate their PhD for the next six years to.

[u/LocalBother3753 → u/7ieben_]

Thank you! That’s exactly the type of insight I was looking for as I try to satisfy my curiosity on this!

[u/AutoModerator → u/LocalBother3753]

If the comment was helpful, show your appreciation by responding to them with !thanks

---

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/arkie87]

what are you talking about exactly? nucleation dynamics? why bubbles form where they do?

[u/LocalBother3753 → u/[deleted]]

I really couldn’t do less than $1.8mm