Halophiles

Whoa!  Long time since my last blog post.  If I were a recovering blog addict, this might be a good thing, but alas, this is not the case.

A couple (a few?) posts ago, I used the word "halophile."  It was one of those cases where I knew what I wanted to say -- "Salt-lover" -- and so I employed the handy method of combining Greek root words.  Hal- means "salt" (e.g. "Halogen"), and, of course, Phil- means "lover" (e.g. "Philosopher," "Philanthropist," "Pedophile," etc.).  Wikipedia has a pretty handy list of Greek and Latin roots here.

So, once I had the word formed, I Googled it, and to my delight (but not surprise), the word exists.  Another time this has happened is when I used the word "Mensiversary" (composed of Latin roots) because I hoped there was a more efficient way of saying "One-month Anniversary."  It turns out this isn't an official English word, but I'm also not the first to use it, as a quick Google search shows.

Anyway, back to the point: Halophiles are a real thing.  They're organisms that thrive in environments with high salt concentrations, specifically five times higher than that of the ocean.  I particularly got a kick out of the fact that Halophiles belong to the larger concept of "Extremophiles" (organisms that thrive in extreme environments), which just goes to show that salt, too, is extreme.

Unfortunately, most (probably all) Halophiles are microscopic, so you probably won't be seeing any up close without a microscope.  It turns out that to live in such high concentrations of salt, you need to be wary of dessication (drying up), protein aggregation (who knows?), and all sorts of other silly microscopic things.  However, these are just a different set of issues for a unique environment.  In fact, Haloarchaea, a specific variety of Halophiles will perish when removed from their salty environs.  These guys require a whopping 2M salt concentration to survive, and can handle environments consisting of nearly 40% salt concentration.

Haloarchaea (Red Team) taking the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds by storm.

Some other Halophiles include Dunaliella salina, which are actually used in cosmetics and dietary supplements for their anti-oxidant effects; Chromohalobacter beijerinckii, which were discovered in 1935 floating around in some fermented salted beans; and Tetragenococcus halophilus, which are active in the fermentation of soy sauce, miso, and salted anchovies.

Boiling Saltwater

Life takes its toll, even for the halophile...

But here comes another blog post.

Adding salt to water will increase the water's Boiling Point.  What this means is that it takes a higher temperature to make the water come to a boil.  At sea level, water boils at 100 ºC (212 ºF), though at higher altitudes the boiling point of water decreases, and vice-versa, due to some other non-salt-related phenomena.

The reason that salt increases the boiling point of water is fairly straightforward.  Salt (NaCl), as I've mentioned previously, is an ionic compound.  Many ionic compounds (particularly those including sodium) are soluble in water, which means that they dissolve.  When salt, composed of sodium ions and chlorine ions, dissolves, it breaks down into its individual ions.

These ions are nonvolatile, which means that they do not evaporate.  Instead, they just absorb heat energy which would otherwise be absorbed by the water (H20).  Now, you might think that this means that you can add any old thing (like a shoe) to boiling water to "steal" its heat, and that's true... but all you'd accomplish is to make the water to take longer to boil.  Once it reaches 100 ºC (or a slightly different temperature depending on where you live), it's going to boil.  Adding salt to water makes it boil at a higher temperature, which has its benefits.

This guy knows.

 

Whatever temperature water boils at is as hot as that water is going to get (in its liquid form, anyway).  Gaseous water can get pretty dang hot, but unless you're cooking with a pressure cooker (which also raises the boiling point of water, by the way), all the steam that your boiling water produces is just going to cool down right away.  The benefit to increasing the boiling point of water is that it allows you to achieve higher temperatures, which means that you can cook your food faster or more thoroughly. 

If you're at a high altitude and your water boils at a temperature that's too low to adequately cook your food, you can add salt to raise the boiling point.

To give an idea as to the effect of salt on the boiling point of water, here's a data table produced by a fourth grader from Mankato, Minnesota six years ago (I like to have credible sources):