stuff

Bornean bearded pig Sus barbatus barbatus

im currently playing Vintage Story with some friends. It looks and behaves like minecraft, but really it's a early-modern (think 1600s) survival simulator with weird steampunk science gone wrong themes. it's not groundbreaking but it hits the right notes for me in terms of speed of progress and things to do. and of course, I play with mods (do you... not mod your games?) the vanilla game has a cooking pot that doesn't start "cooking" until the contents in the vessel reach 200 degrees Celsius. If you know anything about cooking and physics you should be immediately terrified, because the temperature that things actually cook is largely dictated by the boiling point of water, which is 100 degrees Celsius at 1 atmosphere of pressure (sea level, abbreviated 1 atm).

Your food is full of water. So, like, even if you can set your oven to 200 degrees Celsius, that's the temperature of the air in the oven, not he ingredients

If you were to raise a pot of food up to 200 degrees Celsius, you'd need a pressure cooker, which increases the boiling point of water. However, you'd need a pressure cooker that no one in their right mind would put in their home. a stove top pressure cooker cooks at 15 PSI, or 1.02 atm, to raise the boiling point of water to about 121 degrees C.

In order to raise the boiling point of water to 200 degrees C, you'd need a pressure cooker that operates at...

just about 39 atmospheres. or 571 PSI.

Seems high, but that's not unobtainable with really good equipment irl. For reference, the pressure at the Mariana trench (deepest point of the ocean) is 15,750 PSI, or ~1071 atmospheres of pressure.

we're not done here

I mentioned mods earlier for a reason. We installed some mods because games are more fun with mods. A conflict between two mods: one that changes the speed at which materials heat up, and one that adds a much, much larger cooking vessel, created a minor situation:

I went to make some broth by boiling bones in water. I wanted to make a lot, so I used this modded vessel, which holds 50L of water vs the vanilla cooking pot's 6L.

I tossed the stuff in and lit the fire. The temperature of the water went past 200 degrees Celsius, and did not stop. It topped out at 1100 degrees Celsius.

How much pressure do you need to change the boiling point of water to 1100 degrees Celsius?

im afraid i've gone past the point of boiling water. I'm now creating new elements unknown by science. The pressure at the center of the sun is approximately 3840000000000 PSI, or 261296501407.55 atm. This is 30,500 times higher than the pressure at the center of the sun.

my broth is done. my broth contains enough energy to obliterate our local galactic neighborhood. my broth is delicious. my broth is purple:

cool

“Doctor, you have to help me. I’ve been married 30 years to my husband and I feel he’s lost all interest in me. You know, phisically speaking. He barely looks at me, let alone have sex with me. Oh, I really miss the good old times where we had wonderful sex multiple times a week, there must be something you can do to help me…”

“Well, it’s not very ethical, but there’s this experimental drug we need to test” the doctor takes a vial from a drawer “this is a very potent aphrodisiac. Just one drop in a glass of water is enough to awaken the libido of a dying man. When you feel it’s a special night and you want to have sex with your husband, try and pour one drop in his glass, and I can guarantee that you will see a new life in him”

“Oh thank you doctor, thank you so much. Tomorrow it’s our anniversary, what better night to try it out?”

Two days pass. The morning after the fated night, the woman goes back to the doctor. She appears disheveled, barely being able to walk.

“Wh-what happened?” Asks the doctor, visibly worried

“Oh, doctor, I feel so sad… Yesterday, while we were having dinner, I waited for him to go to the toilet and, as you suggested, I hastily poured one drop of the drug in his water glass. But then I thought: what if this is not enough? It’s been a LONG time since he’s shown any passion towards me. So I poured another drop.”

“Wait, two drops?? But it’s dangerous, we don’t know what can happen if more than one drop is used!”

“But then I felt so insecure, what if he doesn’t like my body anymore? Is two drops really enough? I panicked, and I emptied the whole vial in the glass of water.”

“……”

“He came back from the toilet, sat down and took a good sip from the glass. He froze, eyes wide. The glass fell from his hand. He stared at me like a predator stares at its prey. Then it happened. He violently threw away everything that was on the table, snorting and roaring. Grabbed me, slammed me on the bare table, tore my clothes as well as his and proceeded to have his way with me, making animal sounds I had never heard him make.”

“I’m so sorry for you, it must have been terrible”

“Oh no, doctor. It was the best sex I’ve ever had in 30 years of marriage. I orgasmed multiple times in a matter of minutes, I saw a rough, untamed side of my husband that I thought didn’t exist.”

“Wait, you enjoyed it? Then why did you say you were sad?”