catalysts

After testing to see if either salt, vinegar, or vegetable oil was a catalyst by seeing which one made water boil fastest, we realized that neither salt, nor vinegar was a catalyst. Both of these variables were proven wrong when both boiled at exactly 8 minutes, and 50 seconds. However, when we introduced vegetable oil to the expirament, the water boiled at 4 minutes and 45 seconds. This means that vegetable oil is a catalyst because it sped up the expirament by 4 minutes and 5 seconds. This proved my hypothesis wrong because I beleived that salt would help water boil fastest and that vegetable oil wouldn't make any differance. An observation that I had during the expirament is that the water would bubble every few seconds in temperature rises. There was a pattern to the bubbles every minute or so, but with the vegetable oil, there was no pattern at all, it was as if the oil sped up and cut out a whole part of the expirament.