My experience leads me to assume that the thermometer was mismarked. My high school chemistry teacher drilled into us that the thermometers we had were all precise, but of varying accuracy. A thermometer might say that water boils at 99.5 C, but if it did, it would also say that it froze at −0.5 C. Again, there are conditions that actually change the temperature at which water boils, so it’s possible you were at a lower atmospheric pressure or that the water was contaminated. But, given that we have a grand total of one data point, I can’t narrow it down to a single answer.
But, given that we have a grand total of one data point, I can’t narrow it down to a single answer.
Exactly!
Given just one data point, every explanation for why we didn’t observe water boiling at 100 degrees C is an excuse for why it should have. To honestly answer this question, we would have to have performed additional experiments.
But we had already had a conclusion we were supposed to have reached—a truth by definition, in our case. Reaching that conclusion in our imperfect circumstances required rationalization.
Uh, no. Pressure affects boiling point. If you’re at a different pressure, it should not boil at 100 degrees C. If your water is contaminated by, say, alcohol, the boiling point will change. We aren’t trying to explain away datapoints, we’re using them to build a system that’s larger than “Water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade.” Just adding “at standard temperature and pressure,” to the end of that gives a wider range of predictable and falsifiable results.
What we’re doing is rationality, not rationalization.
My experience leads me to assume that the thermometer was mismarked. My high school chemistry teacher drilled into us that the thermometers we had were all precise, but of varying accuracy. A thermometer might say that water boils at 99.5 C, but if it did, it would also say that it froze at −0.5 C. Again, there are conditions that actually change the temperature at which water boils, so it’s possible you were at a lower atmospheric pressure or that the water was contaminated. But, given that we have a grand total of one data point, I can’t narrow it down to a single answer.
Exactly!
Given just one data point, every explanation for why we didn’t observe water boiling at 100 degrees C is an excuse for why it should have. To honestly answer this question, we would have to have performed additional experiments.
But we had already had a conclusion we were supposed to have reached—a truth by definition, in our case. Reaching that conclusion in our imperfect circumstances required rationalization.
Uh, no. Pressure affects boiling point. If you’re at a different pressure, it should not boil at 100 degrees C. If your water is contaminated by, say, alcohol, the boiling point will change. We aren’t trying to explain away datapoints, we’re using them to build a system that’s larger than “Water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade.” Just adding “at standard temperature and pressure,” to the end of that gives a wider range of predictable and falsifiable results.
What we’re doing is rationality, not rationalization.