It’s not air, it’s actually water vapour. When water boils, it turns from liquid water to gas water, but still just water.
Some of the bubbles may be from dissolved gases coming out of solution as the water warms (warm water can’t hold as much dissolved gas as cold water), but the big bubbles of boiling water is just water vapour.
boiling is a bulk phenomenon so the water on the lowest surface first heats up, due to it the water starts to expand turning water into water vapor then as the density of the water is higher than the water vapor so the vapor moves above the surface of the liquid water
water vapor (steam) is more energetic (heat) and could cause more damage to your skin than a boiling water
(it doesn’t happen when evaporate cause it is a surface phenomenon the water only on surface will turn into water vapor)
It’s steam, also called water vapor (water in gas form). Think of heat as energy. Ice is water at low energy. The atoms that make up water slow down when they are cold, because they lose energy. They slow down so much that they (almost) freeze in place, forming a solid (ice).
Boiling water is the opposite. You are heating up the water, so the atoms are gaining energy and moving more. They move so much that they start bouncing around and rising into the air in the form of a gas. The gas (steam) is just water with a bunch of energy.
So in terms of energy (or heat) for water, solids (ice) have the lowest energy, liquids (water) are in the middle, and gases (steam/water vapor) have the highest energy.
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