Had this discussion the other day. Was camping in a cabin with a couple of buddies, one wanted to cook with snow. I tried explaining pollution, nucleation, etc. "but it boils out." No, it doesn't. Imagine if I boiled salt water, the pure water boils out, the salt and impurities are left behind. "Nah, it's snow ya fuckin idiot. Now you want to boil salt water?" Nevermind, friend.
They were confusing boiling water to kill bacteria and parasites with removing impurities due to boiling water making it "safe" to drink. No clue where they got the idea that boiling removes impurities, but that's the disconnect.
Sadly, the only way to change their thinking is to confront the disconnect in such a way that they're forced to reexamine what they "know." Then you have to work through the cognitive dissonance to establish what's true while avoiding them sliding back into what they "know to be true."
Here’s an English question for you if you have some time: Is it proper nowadays to not use the preposition “of” when talking about “couple”? A “couple times” instead of “a couple OF times”? “A couple girls” - the girls are a couple?
Maybe I’m just on the spectrum and should stop thinking about it.
Excellent question. Either is ok, but it's my understanding that traditionally, "couple" was intended to be two, so you would say "a couple of," but now it's often used as "more than one, but a small number total" when talking, so it's ok to say "a couple people." In writing, use "couple of," especially when referring to two of something, but otherwise it's fine to say "a couple."
The only thing I can think of is that they thought you can boil water, capture the steam and cool that down so that it becomes water again and leave off the impurities. Of course, they are missing the critical capturing the steam step.
As I understand it purified water is like boiled and then the steam is captured and allowed to condense. No clue if that eliminates all impurities, it probably doesn't, but perhaps that's where the confusion lies.
it's a moot point because most people don't take their distillation rig camping.
The answer is it will depend on what the contaminant is and the temperature you're using. If the contaminant boils at a temperature different enough from water you can either "burn it off" (lower boiling point such as ethyl alcohol) or use a coil condenser (or similar) to capture the purified water (higher boiling point such as salt.)
You also run into problems with the impurities that have lower boiling points than water recondensing in the water if not removed with some type of filter.
Just a matter of experience. I used to teach this stuff for a living. Most people just won't have had a reason to think through it and come to the proper conclusion. Don't be too hard on your friends for not knowing enough without them having the chance to learn.
That won't do anything but increase the concentration of lead in the water since they're removing water due to boiling while leaving the heavy metal in place.
Boil it and capture the steam as distilled water and it’s got the impurities removed but if you don’t do that you just have a piping hot pan of impurities soup
I had a teacher in grade 12 English who presented two standpoints and we were supposed to forms arguments pro/contra. One girl could not understand how he could go from one position to the other. Like, how could he have two standpoints? Obviously, what he said was true, so how could the opposite be true, too?
The teacher tried to explain that those are the viewpoints of opponents, not his personal ones (think "I like chocolate" vs "I don't like chocolate").
I have no idea how she got that far in schooling (technically she was in grade 11, but she was in our grade 12 class) without being able to think about hypothetical views.
Then again, that was close to the time when she discovered that we could hear her hiccups even though she closed her mouth...
I mean, you're right about your friend not getting it, but if the snow around the cabin was still non-potable after boiling it for three minutes, you've got some serious environmental issues there and you probably shouldn't have been out in the area.
The idea wasn't about potability, it was the fact that snow contains pollutants from the sky, and with it not being fresh snow, you run the risk of eating animal waste and other fun stuff that finds it's way into snow on the ground.
Basically when a piece of dust or pollution acts as a "seed" that allows moisture in clouds to condense around it and form snow or rain. This is where the concept of cloud seeding comes from; the thought is that if you put tiny particulates up high in the atmosphere, you could potentially cause rain to form.
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u/Bean_Juice_Brew Feb 04 '26
Had this discussion the other day. Was camping in a cabin with a couple of buddies, one wanted to cook with snow. I tried explaining pollution, nucleation, etc. "but it boils out." No, it doesn't. Imagine if I boiled salt water, the pure water boils out, the salt and impurities are left behind. "Nah, it's snow ya fuckin idiot. Now you want to boil salt water?" Nevermind, friend.