Would it just turn into a pressurized container full of steam? Would the water stay water but just like, really hot?
In: 98
To start with it would have to be a pretty strong vessel. As you add heat (energy) it will slowly raise temperature until right before boiling, (boiling point depends on the pressure of the “container”) then it would stop raising temperature and start changing state aka start turning into steam. The process of changing to steam will cause the contents of your container to expand roughly 1600 times its original volume creating pressure. As more and more heat is added the water won’t increase in temperature as it slowly turns to 100% steam (known as dry steam). Once you’re at 100% steam and keep adding heat it will now start increasing in temperature. This is called superheating and as the temperature goes up so will the pressure.
Side note: Heat causing a temperature change is known as sensible heat. Heat causing a state change is known as latent heat. It takes quite a bit more energy to cause a state change than it does to raise the temperature. If you measured the temp of a pot of water you would see the temperature of the water increase quite rapidly and then just sit there for a bit right before it actually starts boiling.
The higher you raise that steam temp, the more work you can do with it before it eventually falls back down in temperature and starts to condense. For example, at a 800mw power plant I worked at we brought the steam to 538 degrees before sending the steam to the turbine where it would do work rotating the turbine and generator before it condensed back to water to be sent back to the boiler.
Water is a great median for transferring energy from a heat source to do work.
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