The boiling point of water, all peer review published scientific papers now agree, an arbitrary but necessary legal distinction imposed on the continuous increase of gaseous characteristics and decrease of liquid characteristics with increased temperature of water. The legal boiling point of water is 18 minutes on a stove (21 minutes if the water contains any admixture of alcohol and is boiled in the United States of America). There are, however, some chemists who want to increase the legal boiling point of water to 25 minutes on a stove, while a small percentage of politicians (mostly politicians with low body temperatures) want to decrease it to 16 or 17 minutes.