I saw this video that says water “expands into” steam and that 1 cup of water can expand into as much as 1600 cups of steam.
But like… Why specifically 1600? Is steam a gas? If it’s a gas it can basically occupy any volume however large, right? The molecules will just go far apart from each other “forever”, no?
This led to a series of increasingly existential questions….
(1) Is steam not a gas? It does look a little like water when it rises from my kettle.
(2) Do different liquids “expand into” different volumes of their gaseous substances?
And more exestentially…
(3) What does the “volume” of a gas even mean if it can expand basically infinitely to “fill any container” as I was taught in school?
This is the YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/-8lXXg8dWHk
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Steam is a gas. When it is pure steam, it is called saturated or superheated and is invisible. You do not see steam from a kettle or boiling pot.
The “steam” you see when the kettle boils is actually liquid water droplets that are condensing out of the gaseous steam when it comes into contact with the colder air.
1600 is the approximate ratio of liquid to gas volume at the boiling point at standard temperature and pressure. So right at the moment the steam boils – or changes phase from liquid to gas – it expands 1600 times in volume.
If you continue to heat the steam , it can continue to expand – like any gas, following the ideal gas law- as long as the gas is free to expand. If it’s not free to expand it will increase in pressure.
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