Thursday, 25 September 2008

Latent Heat

Do water boil at a certain point?
Every matter will boil or melt at certain point.
When matter boil / melt at certain point, so how can heat quoted at that point?
In that case you need a term to explain heat needed when there's no temperature changes.
This will lead to LATENT HEAT.
Latent heat can be used to describe amount of heat needed to change state / phase or in the area where there's no temperature changes / constant temperature.
The amount of heat needed will be quote as :
Q = m L
where Q as quantity of heat needed to boil / melt, m as mass of the melting / boiling matter, and L as the latent heat of 1 kg of matter to boil / melt

Do you know that if you boil water in a highland, you will get point below 100C?
And so do impurities also influence boiling and melting point of water.
Study how long does it take to boil water and water with salt in it, ok :)

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