Recent Blog Posts
When a substance changes state from a liquid to a vapor, the process occurs at a constant temperature. When this occurs in a refrigeration system, it is said that the refrigerant is “saturated”. For water, experiments have proven that saturation, or boiling, occurs at 212ºF at 14.7 psia, which is atmospheric pressure. However, if someone were […]
“Saturation” is a term used to describe a substance that is at its boiling point. Water, for example, is said to be saturated when its temperature is 212ºF at sea level. The 212ºF water may be a liquid, a vapor, or a mixture of the two. When a substance is saturated, heat added or removed […]
To reinforce what is known about the states of matter, it can be helpful to study the heat energy profile of water. The graph below shows heat, measured in BTUs, applied to a pound of water on the horizontal axis and the temperature change of the water on the vertical axis. The values displayed are […]
Simply defined, “matter” is anything that takes up space and can be weighed. All physical things are made of matter since physical things have both volume and mass. Technically, there are five states of matter: Solid Liquid Gas Plasma Bose-Einstein condensate Items four and five on that list are not relevant to the study of […]
There are three distinct categories of heat transfer: Conduction Convection Radiation Each of these heat transfer modes is important to understand. The first two modes, conduction and convection, require direct physical contact between the molecules of the substances involved in the heat transfer. The third mode, radiation, is the transmission of heat in the form […]