On 02/09/2011 09:43 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > Stephen A. Lawrence <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
(I'm going to put back a few lines you snipped, just for context & clarity:) > After a while, all the water boils to steam. > > The kettle is still filled with water vapor, of course! But now there's > no liquid water left. > > The stove is still on high, and after a while the bottom of the kettle > starts to glow a cheery red. > > > The kettle is still filled with water vapor -- "dry steam" -- and the > pressure inside is still 1 atmosphere, give or take a few millibars. > > > > What temperature do you suppose the steam inside the kettle is at? > > > Could this be -- gasp! -- an example of superheated steam at 1 > atmosphere?? > > Darn right. > [Jed replied:] > > Nope. It is 100 deg C. This is well established. The only way you can > raise the temperature is to pressurize it. It does not matter what the > temperature of kettle surface is. Jed, it's a container, with all the walls at several hundred degrees C or higher; the bottom's in contact with the burner and is probably at about 1000 C. There is nothing inside the container except gas: Gaseous water. Yet you are claiming the gas inside the container can't be hotter than 100 C! That's magic -- it violates the laws of thermodynamics bigtime. How can water vapor be so magical? No other gas behaves that way -- no other material behaves that way!
