Does Water Burn?

Does any one else remember when they were young and just learning how to cook one of your adult friends or family members jokingly saying to you; 1) don't burn the house down or 2) make sure not to burn the water? Well I do.

I never understood why any one would say these things nor did I understand how you could burn water. So I did an experiment a couple of weeks ago to see if water burns......OK so it wasn't an experiment. I wanted to boil some water for rice noodles. Whenever I watch the water it seems that it doesn't boil so I thought I would out think it and leave the room and work on the computer. Oops the water out thought me....while I got all caught up on every thing on the computer and my mind began to fog over in the distance of our home I could smell something burning. Slowly proceeding into the kitchen where I smelled the burning I quickly realized that I had forgotten the water that I left to boil.

So does water burn? I would have to say no but the pan does when the water evaporates. To this day whenever I use that pan I can smell the burned smell---I think that I actually started to melt the metal of the pan.

This little "experiment" reminded me of  another experiment that I performed for little children when I was maybe 9/10 years old. We were staying at a family friends house at the time. They had a large family, many of their children were 6 or younger. For some reason all of us kids were left alone in the house and the older ones, 8,9, 10 were supposed to watch the younger ones. So I decided that I would be a scientist and show the younger kids how snow actually was water frozen. I carefully went outside with a small bowl that was made of a type of plastic (the kind that was really popular during the 70's---it was hard and mustard yellow). After retrieving the snow I needed a heating element to melt the snow into the water---I knew this would be great showing the younger kids, it would be alike a great magician performing the greatest trick of all!!! So I turned one the heating elements of the electric stove and place the bowl on top of it.

What a shock I had when the bowl proceeded to melt---what had happened? The snow was supposed to melt, not the bowl??? Last time I visited our family friends the mother brought out that same bowl to show me that she had kept it as a relic---