Difference between purified and drinking water?

What is the difference between distilled, purified, and boiled water?

• I was buying some distilled water from walmart for a science project and my dad said that it was nothing but boiled water and that there was no difference between purified, distilled, and boiled water. so i was just wondering if there was any difference. references are preferable because i might put some of this information on the project itself. thank you :)

• Answer:

  Boiled water is water that has been boiled and then cooled. This is often done to make coffee tea etc or kill microbes. The mineral content is basically unaffected; the mineral content will be a bit more concentrated due to some evaporation of the water. Distilled water is different; the water is boiled and the steam is captured and liquefied. This is pure water as all the impurities are left behind. Purified is a bit of a catch all phrase and can mean a lot of different things. The water is processed to remove some of the impurities. The most common methods are filtration, deionisation, and chlorination (to kill microbes).