Do Hot and Cold Water Mix (Shabbos 99b-100a)
The gemara says (explanation courtesy of Kollel Iyun Hadaf):
(Rava): The following is obvious to me - water on top of water is considered Nach (if one takes some of the water resting in a Kli or another place, this is considered Akirah)....
R. Yochanan ben Nuri and Chachamim argue about oil floating on top of wine: (Mishnah): If [Terumah] oil is floating on top of [Terumah]wine and a Tevul Yom touched the oil, only it is Nifsal (they are not considered connected, we do not consider it as if he touched the wine; the oil is only a Shelishi l'Tumah, it cannot Posel the wine);R. Yochanan ben Nuri says, they are connected (both are Nifsalim).
Why is it that the Chachamim consider oil on top of wine to be separate but not water on top of water? Is it just because they don't mix? If so then if you take boiling hot water and put it on top of cold water you should not be chayav because they won't mix (you can see how you could experiment with that here). It could be the Chachamim would say that is like oil on top of wine. However, I think that they probably would say it's different. In the case of oil and wine it has two things 1. it's two different substances and 2. they don't mix. However, in the case of the water, even though they don't mix but they're still the same substance so it would be a hanacha. I'm not sure about that though.
UPDATE: Please read the comment.
posted by David @ 8:23 AM
1 Comments:
Aryeh pointed out to me that my entire comparison is not good. The water is not comparable to the oil and wine at all.
"The one key concept that you are missing is that the two waters will not mix INITIALLY. What will happen?
Well you have more and less dense water which, true, do not mix
(assuming, of course, that one is delicately placed atop the other which is unlikely to be the case in a real-life example, but we'll ignore that for now). The energy will *immediately* transfer from the higher energy item (warm water) to lower energy item (cold water). It happens immediately. It's a law of physics."
However, he points out that the wine and oil will never mix. Therefore even though the Chachamim say that you are patur for putting oil on top of wine they would never even entertain the possibility of being patur in the case of hot water and cold water.
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