Are vapour and steam two different states or do they refer to a single state? If they are the same, how does water get evaporated from seas and oceans without touching the 100C mark considering the change of state occurs only at 100C? What is the gaseous form of H2O known as?
Thanks in advance!
In: Physics
Evaporation and vaporisation are the same thing. Water can evaporate at lower temperatures because temperature is just the name we give to ‘average energy of a substance’. Even though the sea is 16 degrees celsius, some of the molecules of water in it still have enough energy to break free and become a gas. The energy if the molecules is always a distribution, with most having an around average energy, but outliers having much less and much more due to random chance and collisions.
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