Question Morpheus:

You know it’s impossible to burn water, right???

Water cannot take place in a combustion reaction, namely because fuel + oxygen —> CO2 + H2O. Since combustion is a irreversible exothermic reaction, and does not reach a point of equilibrium, you cannot burn water.

Therefore, Alyss cannot physically burn water. It is frankly impossible.

In addition, how would such a action show a visible macroscopic effect? Water doesn’t change colour or transparency (much) when boiled, and unless the water already contained a foodstuff, there would be no suspended residue to blacken and show up as a result.

Now, if you meant that she electroysised the water and burned the resultant H2 gas in the presence of O2, then she would technically be burning water. Although she’d be quite burned herself, considering the explosion would be quite large, depending on the concentration of H2 gas in the vicinity of the flame.

If you heat water sufficiently, it will dissasociate into hydrogen and oxygen.
The hydrogen will then burn in the oxygen.
If you stop the heat, it will go back to water, if you keep supplying heat you get into the combustion product dissasociating again and burning again. With careful management, its actually possible to keep this semi-stable state going (although admittedly rather pointless)

Oh fiddlesticks! Forgot about disassociation.

Good thing my degree’s in Mechatronic Engineering, and not Chemical Engineering or other assorted fields.

But doesn’t that also mean that she just stood at the stove fiddling with the gas knobs/whatever the stove uses to control temperature, and didn’t put anything into the water...

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...I get it now. Damm pissfuck up the mothercrumping goram frakking Peta’Qing flipping asscrack. With a pipe cleaner.

Or to be more *snerk* thematically correct:

Pardon my French

But still: taking the definition of water as a polar covalent compount of two hydrogen protons and a single oxygen atom, you cannot. Burn. Water.

I have burned water, more than once. That happens when you, say, are heating a bit of water for later use (such as cooking pasta or making tea), get distracted by something else (like forum debates, an interesting piece of programming or some neat image editing) and forget about it for a few hours. Eventually you smell something funny, go check the kitchen and find out that all the water boiled out, the aluminium kettle has melted and the burnt smell comes from the handle.

OK, I haven't "burned" the water in the chemical reaction sense, but I did it in the culinary sense: I overcooked it to the point of causing unpleasant smells, ruined cookware and a minor kitchen disaster.

And that's why I now have one of them fancy whistling kettles.

Minh, while you cannot technically burn water, you can certainly figuratively burn water. Place pot of water over flame, forget until pot is empty. Pot now has nothing except whatever salts were in the water in it... Salts may or may not burn, but now if the pot is a low temp metal like brass or aluminum, it is in danger of burning.... Sure you didn't technically burn the water, but you certainly destroyed the pot....

The fact that water doesn't burn is the point of the expression. It's hyperbole, like claiming somebody snores loudly enough to wake the dead. It's a pretty standard joke in this part of the world, but maybe Australians are better cooks than us?

I am not sure if it qualifies but if I remember correctly if you combine
2 H2O + O2 + sufficient heat you get 2 H2O2 vapour
Which is at least useful for bleaching everybody's hair in the room

Kettlekorn wrote: The fact that water doesn't burn is the point of the expression. It's hyperbole, like claiming somebody snores loudly enough to wake the dead. It's a pretty standard joke in this part of the world, but maybe Australians are better cooks than us?

At least where I'm at, it's passed being just a joke and is a stock phrase for "I really am just that bad at cooking." I'm actually quite interested to see that it's NOT a universally recognized phrase, a good reminder of the weird ways language spreads. Before this thread (and the large number of comments) it never would have occurred to me that not everyone knew it.

Really the expression isn't to be taken literally, It is an admission of ineptitude. I can burn water (I can't cook even if it is the difference between starvation and living) I have two left feet (I'm so clumsy that I can't even walk across a level floor without problems) Etc et al

We're cooking with gas today!

AH right. Never heard that one before.

Yes, Australian food tends to be on par or slightly better (in some cases) that American food.

Although the Mexican food in California is AMAZING!!!

We have very good seafood here, mainly because the majority of our towns and cities sit on or near the coast, and our Chinese and Italian food is pretty decent as well. Really, Australian food isn't a thing: we have no national dishes (apart from traditional bush food, although I can only recall one time when I've had that), most of our food is pretty international, and since we're a very multicultural land, we get a lot of immigrants bringing foodstuffs from their countries here.

But I think on average, most Australian households tend to have better home cooks. Though it probably extends mainly to the barbie, and not much else, so that may be a bit of a fib (Barbie = BBQ for those uninitiated in Aussie slang). Although my Dad is a amazing cook, which is probably why I've never heard the term.

Is there an Australian expression or idiom for being a terrible cook?

Err...

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A...bad...cook?

Honestly? I don't think there is one. We're pretty laid back as a nation, and I don't think many people complain about the food as much. I've actually never met another Australian who's a bad cook. Hell, I at least know how to make a pretty mean stir fry, but since I'm living on a student budget, I tend to just go and buy pot noodles and eat them for lunch. I've never actually eaten food that could be mistaken for anything BUT food, and the closest I've seen someone get to burning water is when they melted the whistle on the AFRC tea kettle. That was only because they put it on the wrong burner, and the flames licked up the side of the kettle and melted the blighter. Luckily the kettle was OK, and we had a spare whistle.

Katssun wrote: Is there an Australian expression or idiom for being a terrible cook?

'English'