Boiling Point

When a liquid is heated, it eventually reaches a temperature at which the vapor pressure is large enough that bubbles form inside the body of the liquid. This temperature is called the boiling point. Once the liquid starts to boil, the temperature remains constant until all of the liquid has been converted to a gas.
The normal boiling point of water is 100^oC. But if you try to cook an egg in boiling water while camping in the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of 10,000 feet, you will find that it takes longer for the egg to cook because water boils at only 90^oC at this elevation.
In theory, you shouldn't be able to heat a liquid to temperatures above its normal boiling point. Before microwave ovens became popular, however, pressure cookers were used to decrease the amount of time it took to cook food. In a typical pressure cooker, water can remain a liquid at temperatures as high as 120^oC, and food cooks in as little as one-third the normal time.
To explain why water boils at 90^oC in the mountains and 120^oC in a pressure cooker, even though the normal boiling point of water is 100^oC, we have to understand why a liquid boils. By definition, a liquid boils when the vapor pressure of the gas escaping from the liquid is equal to the pressure exerted on the liquid by its surroundings, as shown in the figure below.

Liquids boil when their vapor pressure is equal to the pressure exerted on the liquid by its surroundings.

The normal boiling point of water is 100^oC because this is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of water is 760 mmHg, or 1 atm. Under normal conditions, when the pressure of the atmosphere is approximately 760 mmHg, water boils at 100^oC. At 10,000 feet above sea level, the pressure of the atmosphere is only 526 mmHg. At these elevations, water boils when its vapor pressure is 526 mmHg, which occurs at a temperature of 90^oC.
Pressure cookers are equipped with a valve that lets gas escape when the pressure inside the pot exceeds some fixed value. This valve is often set at 15 psi, which means that the water vapor inside the pot must reach a pressure of 2 atm before it can escape. Because water doesn't reach a vapor pressure of 2 atm until the temperature is 120^oC, it boils in this container at 120^oC.
Liquids often boil in an uneven fashion, or bump. They tend to bump when there aren't any scratches on the walls of the container where bubbles can form. Bumping is easily prevented by adding a few boiling chips to the liquid, which provide a rough surface upon which bubbles can form. When boiling chips are used, essentially all of the bubbles that rise through the solution form on the surface of these chips.