Last night I went to Google and typed "how long to boil egg". I found the following page in the first few results - courtesy of the
European Journal of Physics
The text:
How long does it take to boil an egg? A simple approach to the energy transfer equation
P Roura, J Fort and J Saurina
GRM, Departament de Física, Universitat de Girona, E17071-Girona, Catalonia, Spain
Received 14 July 1999, in final form 16 September 1999
Abstract. The heating of simple geometric objects immersed in an isothermal bath is analysed qualitatively through Fourier's law. The approximate temperature evolution is compared with the exact solution obtained by solving the transport differential equation, the discrepancies being smaller than 20%. Our method succeeds in giving the solution as a function of the Fourier modulus so that the scale laws hold. It is shown that the time needed to homogenize temperature variations that extend over mean distances xm is approximately xm2/, where is the thermal diffusivity. This general relationship also applies to atomic diffusion. Within the approach presented there is no need to write down any differential equation. As an example, the analysis is applied to the process of boiling an egg.
Needlesss to say, I didn't bother solving the math problem.
