[Neeraja Raghavan]

Neeraja Raghavan  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Dear Naked Scientists:
� 
A glass jar is half filled with water. There is a live fish swimming in it.
How can we boil the water that is inside the jar, without killing the fish?
� 
Regards,
Neeraja.
� 
Dr Neeraja Raghavan

What do you think?

[Don_1]

Take the fish out!

[lyner]

Presumably you mean "boil SOME OF the water"?
 You could plunge a red hot iron rod in and boil some of it without frazzling the poor ol' fish.

Or do you put an insulated container with cold water in it into the glass (the other half) and put the fish in that?

Is the clue in "half"?

[Chemistry4me]

Have you discovered some kind of super heat resistant fish species?

[Don_1]

Drop in a furuncle!

[lightarrow]

Neeraja Raghavan  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Dear Naked Scientists:
 
A glass jar is half filled with water. There is a live fish swimming in it.
How can we boil the water that is inside the jar, without killing the fish?
 
Regards,
Neeraja.
 
Dr Neeraja Raghavan

What do you think?

Boiling point depends on external pressure...
If you connect your jar's opening to a void pump, at 4.58 mm of Hg (for example) your water will boil at 0.01 °C. At greater pressure the boiling point will increase.
At ~ 17 mm Hg, the water will boil at 20°C.

[RD]

Compression and decompression would have to be done slowly otherwise the fish would die from “the bends”

[Bored chemist]

A fish with a swim bladder would be in real trouble. Also, dropping the pressure until the water boiled would draw all the dissolved oxygen out of the water.
If there are fish that live near the volcanic vents at the botom of the sea they might just survive  the heat but there's still a problem with oxygen. One of the best ways to remove dissolved gases from liquids is to boil them.

[Madidus_Scientia]

I'll go along with Don_1's answer.

[lyner]

lightarrow,  you are a clever lad!!!!

[Bored chemist]

I'm not getting into the debate on boiling fish alive just to check, so here's a related  observation.
If you wrap an ice cube in metal wire so it sinks you can put it in a narrow tube full of cold water then heat the water near the top of the tube until it boils, without melting the ice.
Water is a fairly poor conductor of heat and, with this setup there's no convection current to distribute the heat.

[lightarrow]

lightarrow,  you are a clever lad!!!!

[:I]

[DrN]

I'll go along with Don_1's answer.

Which one?

I'd go with the first one myself.

[lyner]

A fish with a swim bladder would be in real trouble. Also, dropping the pressure until the water boiled would draw all the dissolved oxygen out of the water.
If there are fish that live near the volcanic vents at the botom of the sea they might just survive  the heat but there's still a problem with oxygen. One of the best ways to remove dissolved gases from liquids is to boil them.

Use a little shark, then - no swim bladder afaik.

[Bored chemist]

So it dies of anoxia rather than trauma.

[lightarrow]

A fish with a swim bladder would be in real trouble.

Ok, what about steam distillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillation#Steam_distillation
but used at the reverse, that is, instead of using water to lower the boiling point of an organic liquid, use an organic liquid to lower the water's boiling point? If you use more different phases, you can add the various vapour pressures and so you lowers even more every substance' boiling point.  [8D]

[lyner]

Are you suggesting getting the fish pissed during the exercise?
Just to prove the point, you'd only need to do it briefly and - hell, it's only a fish! You could eat it afterwards.

[lightarrow]

Are you suggesting getting the fish pissed during the exercise?
Just to prove the point, you'd only need to do it briefly and - hell, it's only a fish! You could eat it afterwards.

You could use inert chemicals, like perfluoropentane:
http://www.fluoromed.com/fluoromed/products/perfluoropentane.html
which has a boiling point of 29°C. (If you are worried for oxygen loss, you can add it to the mix).

[lyner]

That would spoil the taste!

[Raghavendra]

  It's impossible