Re: Why do I need less water to boil more eggs?

Hi!

The eggs in your case are boiled by the steam that arises when the water is heated. Now heat travels from one place to another down the energy gradient following three methods, namely conduction, convection and radiation. Judging by the 'Area of Science', I presume you know what these mean, hence I am not going into their details.

If there was only one egg, then it would be heated by convection (and radiation) from water source to egg only. However, more the number of eggs, there will be more sources of convection (and radiation) for each egg. Think about it in the light of the Superposition principle. Consider all the eggs heated equally. If you observe one and only one egg, you (in your mind's eye) can see that equal amounts of heat (considering an ideal case) from all the eggs, heating that egg. So if one egg provides H joules of heat (say) and there are 'n' number of eggs in the tray, then the amount of heat supplied to each egg is (n-1)H.

Another condition is conduction. If you put a large number of eggs in the tray, then the eggs might actually touch each other. This gives rise to conduction. Thus it heats up even faster.

Thus, more the number of eggs less is the heat (heat is directly proportional to the amount of water vapour which is directly proportional to the amount of water in this case) required to boil them.

Thanks, Abhishek Dey Das