KITCHEN WIZARDRY 1:

HOW TO GET WATER OUT OF OIL

This is the first ouf our so-called Kitchen Wizardry articles. They will teach you some very useful things, and you'll be surprised how many nice and interesting things you can do in your kitchen!

Now, on to the work: It has probably happened to you that you have guests in your house, but no water. Of course, your guests like to drink water, so you're in a bit of a trouble. It is scientifically proved that the lack of regular water supply (i.e. at least once in two hours) leads human individues to nervous and potentially dangerous behaviour. We will also assume that you don't have time to go to the nearest store to buy some water. So, what can you do to save your house from the furious guests?

Luckily, almost every kitchen has large quantities of oil. So, naturally, you will use oil to get water. This requires some knowledge of chemistry, biology and mathematics, but I doubt you will have problems understanding it.

First of all, it is important to know that around 30% of any oil is actually water. The other 70% are minerals, carbon-monoxide and similar things. So, roughly, five liters of oil will translate into one liter of water. One liter of water should be enough for two hours (presuming that you have only one guest, if there are more you will have to have more oil). Apart from oil, you also need to have some sugar, salt, carrot, cucumber and some sulphuric acid.

First you put one liter of oil in the freezer. The other four liters you should pour in a cauldron or something. Put it on the strong fire and wait for five minutes.

You will notice that due to the heat the large percentage of minerals has expired. Some harder minerals are not likely to disappear without a fight, so you will have to use salt and sugar. Mix three coffee spoons of sugar with one spoon of salt, and add a drop of sulphuric acid. This creates a material known as Carbon-Dioxide. Carbon-Dioxide interacts with hard minerals, connects with them and gives us - WATER! Yes, that's right! It is probably one of the coolest things in chemistry to create the water this way.

Now we need to get rid of the carbon-monoxide and other materials from the oil. How are we going to do that? Easily: First of all, those "other materials" are things like fluor, methane and other elements from group 5 of the Periodic system. Since they all belong in the same group as carbon-monoxide, it is natural that they will act similarly to it. A neat way to "extract" those materials is to combine them with natrium peroxide. When combined with natrium peroxide, these materials are simply going to transform to pure oxygen, which will elevate from the substance! And how are we going to get the natrum peroxide? Easily! We need to get some natrium and some peroxide.

As we know from our chemistry lessons, carrot contains lots and lots of natrium, while cucumber contains some peroxide. We will cut the carrot and cucumber into small pieces and put them into one bowl. Add some salt (as a catalist) and mix with a spoon. Natrium from the carrot will interact with peroxide from the cucumber and create the mighty natrium peroxide. Natrium peroxide is a solid brown material, so you won't have trouble extracting it from the carrot-cucumber mixture.

Now, all you have to do is add some natrium peroxide to the oil. It will combine with those materials we want to extract. We will get some pure oxygen, which is going to float away. However, not all of natrium peroxide is going to interact. What happens to the rest of it? Well, since natrium peroxide is pretty unstable, it will interact with hydrogen from the air and transform into ozone, O-3. Ozone will naturally elevate from the surface.

Keep in mind that during this whole time the cauldron was on fire (to provide the heat, a catalist). Naturally, large part of oil has boiled away, and what we're left with is a pure and simple ONE LITER OF WATER (give or take a few drops). Neat, eh?

Well, that's it for now, stay tuned for more kitchen wizardry articles!

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Copyright (C) 2003. by Aleksandar Janjic