In a later show with Dara O'Briain they trapped him by asking for the temperature of the triple point of water; he again said it was 0°C.  It's actually 0.01°C — apparently a lot of people wrote in after this show to complain about him getting points here, so they made sure they burned him for it later.

Waters boiling point also heavily relies on the atmospheric pressure around it.
It boils at lower temperatures higher up.

Um. But why was the answer wrong?

I don't get it. Wiki: "The boiling point of VSMOW under one standard atmosphere of pressure is actually 373.1339 K (99.9839 °C)". Sounds reasonable to me.

>> ^ajkido:
Um. But why was the answer wrong?


I feel this is quite a frequent offence of QI actually, these trick questions that are quite badly phrased. If the question was "at what temperature does water boil" then a correct answer is indeed 100 degrees Celsius (unless you want to go into the decimal points like conan did). The point that Stephen Fry was making was when Anders Celsius invented the scale he graded it in the reverse. That 100 degrees was the melting point and 0 degrees the boiling point. Shortly after his death the scale was then changed by other people to what it is now (100 degrees boiling) and that was what came out as the generally accepted scale and the one that's used today.

Some people might now say "oh but the reversed scale we use today is called the CENTIGRADE, while Celsius is still the one that he invented so if the question was 'at what temperature CELSIUS does water boil' then Stephen Fry would actually be in the right". A question of semantics, in many countries (maybe even most?) including Celsius native Sweden, the current scale is also called the Celsius scale and no name distinction is made between the original and the current version of the scale, and even in countries where a distinction is made Celsius is still the generally accepted name for the current scale among the population.

Then again I guess the show wouldn't be much fun if the obvious answer turned out to be the right one...

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, dara obrien, celsius, fahrenheit, h2o' to 'Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, dara o briain, celsius, fahrenheit, h2o' - edited by alien_concept

Thanks for the explanation Lithic. In German it's Celsius either way, so to a non native Brit i guess this might not make sense depending of origin.

>> ^charliem:
Waters boiling point also heavily relies on the atmospheric pressure around it.
It boils at lower temperatures higher up.


This is what I was thinking. Without qualifying where you are (i.e. the local air pressure), there's no -exactly- correct answer.

I only speak American English so pardon me, but wtf does Fry say after "ice would melt at a hundred" (0:40) .. all I heard was:
"Cause nort is actually now ... iscuzofthebellyrub".

^ "cause nought is actually now, of course it's the other way around..."

>> ^burdturgler:
.. all I heard was:
"Cause nort is actually now ... iscuzofthebellyrub".

That made me lol something awfully.

Water boils only when Chuck Norris allows it to boil.

pure water never boils. Which is why you should never use distilled water to make coffee or tea.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, dara o briain, celsius, fahrenheit, h2o' to 'Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, Dara O Briain, celsius, fahrenheit, h2o' - edited by EndAll

^Chaucer

Umm, wrong

Chaucer is wrong in that he's got his urban legends wrong. Distilled water boils in a kettle all right, it's the microwave any water without additives shouldn't be put into as it can get superheated (bubbles don't form, and there is a temp buildup way beyond the boiling point). When a spoonful of coffee is introduced to a cup of superheated water, literally an explosive reaction occurs - and people have suffered serious burns from this.

^ You a smart motherfucker! That's right! The metric system!

Can I be an ass and say Dara O'Briain did theoretical physics? He is our (popular comedian) leader.

*water

Adding video to channels (Water) - requested by EDD.