Does Distilled Water Boil/Evaporate? Mythbusters Examined

[kmbop53]

A couple of days ago I was watching the show Mythbusters, which I find the experiments to be kind of hokey, but they did an experiment and they stated that distilled water does not boil. Is this true, if so does this mean that it does not evaporate faster when heated?

 

[dav2008]

I doubt that they found that distilled water doesn't boil...

Can you find which episode it is from the list on here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythbusters (Scroll down to the very bottom see each season in detail)

Edit: I think what you are thinking of is superheating. If you put water in a very smooth container and microwave it, it will boil because there aren't any places for bubbles to form. Of course as soon as you disturb the liquid, it violently boils.

I guess they were testing to see if distilled water was at a greater risk to superheat than regular tap water.

 

[berkeman]

They must have said "Doesn't boil as easily" or something...

 

[kmbop53]

thanx that's quite interesting, you i think that they were talking about that, after a while it just exploded all over the microvave.