Monday, January 17, 2011

It's Cold Here But Not This Cold...

YouTube - Evaporating Water in -30C in Yellowknife, NWT

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great video!

Actually, the water is not "evaporating", at least not at first.

Evaporating water, i.e., water that is undergoing a phase transition from a liquid state to a gaseous state would not be visible in the gaseous state. Water vapor, (i.e., gaseous state water) is invisible to the naked eye.

Clearly in the video, upon the tossing of the water into the air, a cloud can be seen which then disappears.

The demonstration used very hot water, which when tossed into the cold air, may have either formed small droplets (liquid) or small particles (ice/snow). I can't say which from the video.

These small particles, if liquid, then most likely evaporated into invisible water vapor, but could have frozen into very small particles.

These small particles if solid (and very small) may have undergone a process called sublimation, transitioning right from the solid state to the gaseous state, without transitioning through a liquid phase.

TT