i am a student at old westbury. just add boiling chip!

Never add a boiling chip to a hot liquid, because it can cause immediate boiling over of the solution. If you forget to add a boiling chip before you begin, you must cool the solution before adding one to prevent product loss. "Porous" boiling chips cannot be re-used since the pores inside these stones become filled with liquid on cooling. "Sharp" boiling chips like silicon carbide or coal can often be reused until they become coated with guck and become ineffective.

Anti-bumping chip that is also known as anti-bumping granule is used in liquids to help in smooth boiling. This means, the chip helps in equally distributing the heat within the liquid, and hence stops any kind of damage occurring to the apparatus.

Boiling chips (one of the more common brands is Boileezer) should not be placed in a hot liquid since they may very rapidly start the liquid boiling. Boiling chips provide nucleation sites for gas bubbles to form in a hot liquid. They prevent the liquid from absorbing excess heat and spontaneously boiling all at once (called bumping). If you place a boiling chip in a hot liquid that is at its boiling point, it will spontaneously boil and could splash out of the heating vessel.

The Stages of a chip pan fire

1.

Oil gets so hot that it catches fire all by itself

2.

Water is poured into the burning chip pan

3.

Water is denser than oil, so it sinks to the bottom of the chip pan (shown in red). As the water touches the bottom, it is heated above its boiling point and instantly vaporizes.

4.

The water vapour expands rapidly, ejecting a fireball of burning oil out of the chip pan and into the air where its surface area increases greatly and combustion proceeds much faster