Water’s High Heat of Vaporization

So, in addition to having a high specific heat, water also has a high heat of vaporization. Now vaporization is also referred to as evaporation. And so vaporization, or evaporation is really just referring to the phase transition when a substance goes from, ah, liquid state to a gaseous state, or essentially when a substance is going to be converted from its liquid state to a gas state. And so the heat of vaporization is specifically defined as the amount of heat energy that's required to convert g of liquid into its gaseous state. Now, once again, water has a really, really high heat of vaporization, which means that it takes a relatively large amount of energy in order to convert 1 g of liquid water into its gaseous state. And so the reason that water has such a high heat of vaporization is due to the abundance of hydrogen bonds that form between the water molecules and its liquid form. And so, if we take a look at our example, image down below of waters heat of vaporization notice that we're showing you the heat of vaporization of water and so notice that we have a pot here that's filled with boiling water, since we're applying a lot of heat energy to it, and so we zoom into this boiling water down below. Here, we can see that it's going to be in its liquid water form, which we know is going to be highly dense, compact, and it's going to be forming hydrogen bonds between different water molecules and so you can see the H bonds or the hydrogen bonds are forming when waters in its liquid state. Now, if we want to convert liquid water into the gaseous form water vapor, then we need to apply a high amount of energy and heat. And that's exactly what this flame is doing here. And so when we do that, we're capable of breaking all of the hydrogen bonds that form between the liquid water molecules. And when we break all of those hydrogen bonds, the water molecules are capable of escaping into the gashes, form the water vapor form and noticed that the water vapor is much less dense. Thes water molecules are much more spread apart, and there are no hydrogen bonds, no H bonds forming between the water molecules in the water vapor form, the gaseous form. And so when you could see that this image is just a zoom in into the steam here, that's above the water. And so the main point here is that water has a high heat of vaporization, meaning it takes a large amount of energy to convert 1 g of liquid water into gaseous state. And that also helps with maintaining home yo states Stasis and making sure that water stays in its liquid form, which is critical to maintain life. And so this year concludes our introduction to Waters high Heat of vaporization, and we'll be able to get some practice applying these concepts in our next video, so I'll see you all there.