Skip to content
Practice Problems

Understanding Latent Heat And Phase Transitions: The Transformation Of Water From Ice To Steam

Get precise Assignment Answers on phase transitions and latent heat calculations.

Preview 2 of 2 pages

See the first 2 pages exactly as they appear in the document.

  1. Page 1
    Read page 1 as text

    Understanding Latent Heat and Phase Transitions: The Transformation of Water from Ice to Steam 1. Explain why there is a time lag when changing from one phase to another. Example: water changing into steam When a substance is being heated up or cooled down to change from one phase to another, such as water changing into steam, a great deal of energy is needed for two processes, the latent heat curve and the heat capacity curve. Latent heat is the heat, or thermal energy, that goes into a substance but doesn’t affect the temperature of the substance. During this time, the water for example is at a constant 100 degrees C and slowly changing into steam. However the reason there is a time lag when water changes into steam is because it takes water time to heat up to 100 degrees C, and during this time water is moving up the heat capacity curve, or the heat is interpreted as specific heat, given by Q = m c T (Giancoli, 2008, pg. 502). Most of the time, or most of the heat, is given to the latent heat, more than 5 times more heat in terms of changing water to steam. Therefore it makes it seem like the shorter process is actually heating up the water, and this heating up of the water is what the time lag can be attributed to. In order for water to change into steam, it must be at the correct temperature, 100 degrees C, the correct temperature where the water molecules are able to gain the energy to escape each others Hydrogen bonds, which are extremely strong (Chaplin). 2. Describe the phenomenon of latent heat with respect to the process of heating a block of ice to eventually create steam. Latent heat is the heat, or thermal energy, that goes into a substance which doesn’t affect the temperature of the substance. Latent heat takes into effect two time when ice is turned into steam, once for each phase change. When ice changes into water, the latent heat is called the heat of fusion, and water is slowly turned into ice molecule by molecule. The process when water is turned into steam requires the heat of vaporization, which happens after water reaches its boiling point of 100 degrees C. The latent heat of a substance such as water only depends on its mass, Q = m L, where L is the different specific heats, such as heat of fusion and heat of vaporization. It is important to note that the vast amount of time when a substance is given a constant rate of heat is spent in the latent heat phase, where the substance is water and steam, not a single phase. This is because it takes a great deal of energy for molecules of water to gain enough energy to become released from each others Hydrogen bonds (breaking bonds mean an endothermal process). It takes around 540 kcal of heat to bring 1.0 kg of water from water to steam, while it only takes around 100 kcal of heat to increase water’s temperature from 0 to 100 degrees C (Giancoli, 2008, pg. 502). Works Cited

  2. Page 2

More Physics study materials

See all

Study this document with CramX

Once it is in your library, every tool can work from it.