Actually boiling a rock can lead to disaster. I'm not talking about pouring boiling water over the surface to kill off things on the surface.
Think about the way popcorn works. The outer shell on a seed of popcorn is hard and almost impossible for moisture to pass through easily. You get it hot enough for the water inside the seed to boil but it has nowhere to go. It's the old irresistable force and immovable object thing, something has to give. What gives is the skin on the seed of corn ruptures and the rapidly expanding steam turns the entire seed inside out. It is fine with a little butter and salt on it, but I don't want a rock to turn itself inside out in my kitchen when I am in the house whether it started in a pot of water or was left to bake in the oven. That rock will be a lot harder to deal with than a kernel of corn.
If you have ever put random rocks into a bonfire, something we thought was funny when I was a kid, you know some of them do explode. It was always cool the way the exploding rock would move the wood in the fire around but we were just lucky that nobody got hurt.
Think about the way popcorn works. The outer shell on a seed of popcorn is hard and almost impossible for moisture to pass through easily. You get it hot enough for the water inside the seed to boil but it has nowhere to go. It's the old irresistable force and immovable object thing, something has to give. What gives is the skin on the seed of corn ruptures and the rapidly expanding steam turns the entire seed inside out. It is fine with a little butter and salt on it, but I don't want a rock to turn itself inside out in my kitchen when I am in the house whether it started in a pot of water or was left to bake in the oven. That rock will be a lot harder to deal with than a kernel of corn.
If you have ever put random rocks into a bonfire, something we thought was funny when I was a kid, you know some of them do explode. It was always cool the way the exploding rock would move the wood in the fire around but we were just lucky that nobody got hurt.
