Dr Hector Perera                London

When we boil some water in a cooking pan, water gets converted to steam then escape to the atmosphere but if we put a lid then there will be a pressure inside the cooking pan due to evaporating water molecules. Once it gets to a certain pressure some steam would escape even with the lid on. Similarly if we try to open a bottle of coke or can, you would notice some gas escapes that have been trapped inside bottle or the can. If we shook the bottle or the can before we open then certainly gas escapes with a stream of liquid. People who popped up the champagne cork know that well. Again these gas molecules have been first forced into the liquid coke before they are bottled or canned and the bottle or the can kept them without exploding due to pressure of the gas. 

In the case of water boiling inside a kettle or a cooking pan also forms molecules of steam inside the kettle or the cooking pan and try to escape. In boiling water inside a cooking pan, the forming steam molecules escape if there was no lid over the cooking pan but if there was a lid it will not escape until a certain pressure is build up inside the cooking pan. Again we must understand there is a pressure builds up due to steam molecules then according to science temperature as well increases. That means as the pressure increases, temperature also increases.

For two bodies at different temperatures, heat will flow from hotter to the colder until their temperatures become the same and thermal equilibrium is reached. The atoms and the molecules of a substance at absolute zero would not be completely motionless but have minimum possible movement, and so could not transfer any heat to something else. Absolute zero cannot be actually reached, but there are ways in which it can be closely approached. The pressure exerted by a gas is due to the collisions of the molecules upon the walls of the vessel. The gas inside an inflated balloon exerts a greater outwards than the inwards pressure of the atmosphere. The air inside an open container exerts a pressure equal to atmospheric pressure. Similarly the internal pressure of the fluids in the human body equals to the pressure of the atmosphere preventing it from being crushed. A small amount of water is heated in an open metal oilcan. The water is allowed to boil for a while so that the steam formed replaces some of the air above the water. The heat source is then removed and the lid screwed on to the can. It is now left to cool. As this happens the steam begins to condense to form liquid water. This results in the internal gas pressure becoming less than the external atmospheric pressure. The walls of the can are not strong enough to resist the external pressure and the sides of the can are crushed inwards. This shows, temperature and pressure are directly proportional to each other. Higher the temperature higher the pressure. When you increase the temperature of a gas, the speed of its molecules will increase as well. This leads to the molecules impacting against each other more often and hitting the container more often, which, by its very definition, is an increase in pressure. This is known as Gay-Lussac’s law. We can often see Gay-Lussac’s law in action. In the hotter months of the year, during summer if a tire explodes it could be because with the increase of temperature the pressure inside of the tyre also increases beyond the capacity of the tyre, thus causing it to explode.

When you increase the pressure and compress the molecules they start to move faster and that raises the temperature.

Gay-Lussac’s law: P1/T1=P2/T2 

They’re directly proportional so if pressure increases, temperature increases. Discovered by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in the early 1800’s.  Gives the relationship between pressure and temperature when volume and amount are held constant. If the temperature of a container is increased, the pressure increases.

What happens to the volume of a gas when the temperature decreases, assuming pressure remains constant? 
Charles law: V1/T1=V1/T1 
Once again, they’re directly proportional so if temperature decreases volume also decreases.

If the temperature of a container is decreased, the pressure decreases. These kind of scientific ideas are applied in my scientific energy saving cooking. In my method of cooking, I am trying to make use of those two gas laws.

I have noticed when some people cook things like chicken curry or even a vegetable curry; they always stir it up with a spoon in order to mix them or to turn them around. The point is when we keep on stirring a boiling chicken curry or a vegetable curry, a stream of molecular vapour of spices; ingredients and water escape at the same time and likely to deposit some of it on the person who was stirring then most of it escape into the air. That means as soon as the lid is opened the pressure is released so the trapped gas molecules are free to escape. Some of those molecules have a speed more than the speed of a jumbo jet due to absorption of heat that means gas molecules move due to kinetic energy. This is where this curry cologne comes from, I call this curry cologne or spicy cologne or sometimes chicken cologne as the vapour comes from different sources. It’s not just the vapour of one spice but a mixture of spices so there is no particular name for the vapour and I call it by those names.

Damage done by invisible molecules

 It may be a negligible amount of this invisible cocktail of vapour but the smell is very noticeable. It can do a lot of damages as well by depositing them on anything in the vicinity. If you kept a small radio or some people got a TV as well in the kitchen then that vapour definitely deposits on the surface as well as inside. I kept a cassette radio in the kitchen to listen to radio then sometimes to play music CD but after an year or so, I noticed the surface lost its shine due to this cocktail of vapours. Yes it can be cleaned but just the surface what about those inside these things? I must say it didn’t happen overnight but after a while only you would notice that there is a damage done by this cocktail of vapours. Apart from that quite often you keep a microwave, an electric kettle and a toaster, a fridge and other things in the kitchen. That is quite normal to have even more electrical equipments in the kitchen. These cocktail of damaging army of vapours not just deposit on electrical gadgets but on anything, tables, chairs, cutlery, cups, and plates and also on the walls of the kitchen.  One might say how about if an extractor fan is used so that any vapours are extracted than letting them damage the things in the kitchen. How many of these kitchens have these modern facilities such as extractor fans so the cocktail of vapours are extracted out as soon as they are escaped. Take my word, still some of them escape and do the damage and some still deposit on any person who does the cooking.

This escaping vapour spreads in a spherical shape, not just in a straight line that means it spreads in all directions. Even if you have an extractor fan some of it has deposited on the nearby kitchen cupboard surfaces and may be on the curtain and on the window as well. You will notice this microscopic film of oily layer when you rub the finger on the kitchen cupboards and on the glass surfaces near the cooker. How about the cooker surface, did you notice it has an oily surface as well? This is part of cooking but my question is why we have to rub this unnecessary smelly chicken cologne and curry cologne on the body? Even if you cannot totally avoid this perhaps you can avoid this as much as possible otherwise who would like to cat walk up and down like a mobile kitchen? You might not notice this smell on you but outsiders sense this smell like the drug detecting sniffer dogs at the airports.

I had this problem at the start when I had to live, study and cook in a single room in England. I was rather worried to wear those clothes to the University because that time I was studying in Kingston University. After a long time I started to cook outside the room then after thinking in the right direction I found the technique to cut down this smell. I knew that was something to do with the condensation of chemicals in the food ingredients used for cooking then I adopted a different approach to cook so that I could control this smell. As an additional advantage I found how to minimise the energy wastage in cooking and now I call this SCIENTIFIC ENERGY SAVING COOKING. So far not a single energy expert came forward either to approve or disprove my energy saving cooking technique. Well I put a substantial amount as a challenge for anyone to disprove my energy saving but still no one has taken up my scientific energy saving cooking challenge. That may be because some people got bags of money to spend on energy even when the prices have increased. I am sure energy company bosses are laughing all the way to bank. I think unless cooking is done in a controlled manner, money is wasted on energy; spicy colognes, curry colognes and chicken cologne are available for free for the people to shower with those smelly colognes while cooking. My work has been demonstrated for FREE a few times to public on TV in Sri Lanka, no one has objected. Any comments and energy saving experts challenges are welcomed perera6@hotmail.co.uk