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Heat of Fusion
The energy required to change a
gram of a substance from the
solid to the liquid state without
changing its temperature is
commonly called it's "heat of
Index
fusion". This energy breaks
down the solid bonds, but leaves Phase
a significant amount of energy change
associated with the concepts
intermolecular forces of the
liquid state.

Water phase changes Table of heats of fusion Heat of fusion measurement

Melting point depression by dissolved material
Water

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Heat of Fusion Measurement
Phase
change
concepts

The final expression for the experimental heat of fusion is

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The experimental value is seen to be too small since the denominator of

the first expression for latent heat above contains the entire mass and is
therefore too large. If 100 grams of water is started at 40 C and cooled to 10
C, an ice mass of 33.3 grams of perfectly dry ice would be required for a heat
of fusion equal to 80 cal/gm. If one gram of the measured 33.3 gms were
already melted, then the water would be cooled to 10.6 C and the
experimental value for the heat of fusion would be 77.6 cal/gm.

Water phase changes Heat of fusion Specific heat

Water

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Heat of Vaporization
Phase
The energy required to change
change a gram of a liquid concepts
into the gaseous state at the
boiling point is called the
"heat of vaporization". This
energy breaks down the
intermolecular attractive
forces, and also must provide
the energy necessary to
expand the gas (the PDV
work). For an ideal gas ,
there is no longer any
potential energy associated
with intermolecular forces.
So the internal energy is
entirely in the molecular
kinetic energy.

The final energy is depicted

here as being in translational
kinetic energy, which is not
strictly true. There is also
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some vibrational and

rotational energy.

A significant feature of the vaporization phase change of water is the large

change in volume that accompanies it. A mole of water is 18 grams, and at
STP that mole would occupy 22.4 liters if vaporized into a gas. If the change
is from water to steam at 100°C, rather than 0°C, then by the ideal gas law
that volume is increased by the ratio of the absolute temperatures,
373K/273K, to 30.6 liters. Comparing that to the volume of the liquid water,
the volume expands by a factor of 30600/18 = 1700 when vaporized into
steam at 100°C. This is a physical fact that firefighters know, because the
1700-fold increase in volume when water is sprayed on a fire or hot surface
can be explosive and dangerous.

One way to visualize this large volume change is to note the volume of 18
ml of water in a graduated cylinder as the volume occupied by Avogadro's
number of water molecules in the liquid state. If converted into steam at
100°C this same mole of water molecules would fill a balloon 38.8 cm in
diameter (15.3 inches).

Water phase changes Table of heats of vaporization

The heat of vaporization at body
Some energy modeling calculations
temperature is 580 cal/gm. Why?
Water

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