# Tag Info

### How hot can steam be?

If you can manage to get the steam sample up to about 3000 C, roughly half of the water molecules in it will have split apart into oxygen and hydrogen, and won't be water anymore.
• 73.8k

### How do I create an experiment for measuring the effect concentration of salt has on water's specific heat capacity?

Here's what I would do: Put a measured amount of water/salt solution in a styrofoam cup. Submerge an immersion heater in the solution, and allow time for it to reach the same temperature as the ...
• 9,352

### Why water's temperature is less than air?

If the water is stored in a seal tight container, the water temperature will eventually equal to the surrounding ambient air. The time it takes to get there depends on the time it takes to get the ...
Accepted

### Is there a way to calculate the number of degrees of freedom of water?

The heat capacity only includes degrees of freedom that are actually accessible to the system. In a quantized system, if the first excited state has energy much larger than $kT$, then thermal ...
• 71.3k

### DISPLACEMENT OF WATER

Consider a body of water where with a cylindrical depression in it. The water on the floor of this depression would experience a net upward force because of pressure from water around it. The hole ...
• 27k

### Is there some way to narrow down the Leidenfrost point for water?

As a 12 year chef, yes we do--if you put your hamburger in a cold pan and raise the temp you are not browning your meat, you are graying it. The pan has to hit a temp that it will immediately vaporize ...

### Displacement of water - Archimedes' principle

If you consider two different boxes with the same dimension (assume cube for simplicity), the floating object will displace less water. This means that a less buoyant force is acting on it. However, ...
• 73
1 vote

### Why does hair dry faster when I have less hair?

You are confusing the total rate of evaporation with the time it takes for the water to completely evaporate. The rate of evaporation increases with the surface, true. But this don't tell which system ...
• 6,568

### Questioning solution of lake ice melting exercise

I believe your instructors solution is fine except that the thermal conductivity should be that of the water rather than ice. Also, the following assumptions need to be true: All heat transfer is via ...
• 594
Accepted

### Questioning solution of lake ice melting exercise

The answer given is inconsistent with the set up for the problem statement. It also misses one term in the heat flow. Imagine a lake with water at an unknown temperature $T_l$ ($^o$C) covered by ice ...
• 2,451
1 vote
Accepted

### Why does rain feel like a chain reaction?

I believe in the phenomenon you are describing, rain starts from the cloud tops where the temperatures are cooler and fall through the cloud. As the cooler raindrops fall through the cloud, they take ...
• 594

### Wave with mass transport?

As others have mentioned, waterbeaves are not transverse waves, but involve a longitudinal component. The transverse component is important however, as it is what allows longitudinal oscillations in ...
• 200

### Why does water boil harder when you push a ladle to the bottom of the pot?

There’s either one or two factors at play, depending on what, “… push my ladle to the bottom of my pot…” means. If you were pushing the ladle hard on a wonky old electric coil stove, then it could be ...
1 vote

### For liquids where the solid doesn’t float, how does the liquid freeze?

Heat flows from hot to cold and flows fastest where the difference in temperature is the greatest. So lets imagine an unfrozen lake of water where the air temperature has quickly dropped to a ...
• 594