Question

What produces more severe burns, boiling water or steam?

Answer 1

Hint: More the absolute temperature of a fluid, more the severe burns it will give to the receiver. Boiling temperature of water is \[{100^ \circ }C\]. Water gets converted to steam when temperature is above \[{100^ \circ }C\].


Complete step by step solution:
- We know that the boiling point of water is \[{100^ \circ }C\]. When water is given more heat , then it gets converted from liquid state to gaseous state. The gaseous state of water is called steam.
- So, we can say that boiling water cannot have a temperature more than \[{100^ \circ }C\] because as the temperature of water increases than \[{100^ \circ }C\], it will not be in a liquid state.
- Now, as water is in a gaseous state in steam, it can be given further heat and its temperature will increase, so steam always has higher temperatures than boiling water.
Hence we can say that steam produces more severe burns than boiling water.

Additional Information:
- Now, suppose that both boiling water and steam have the same temperature of \[{100^ \circ }C\]. Also steam will have latent heat in addition to thermal energy. Latent heat is the heat produced when a compound is converted from liquid to gaseous state. Hence in this case also steam will produce more severe burns than boiling water even though both have same temperatures.


Note: Get noted that as water is boiling, it will lose some of water molecules in form of its gaseous state steam and will lose some energy to do that process, so overall its temperature will be constant at \[{100^ \circ }C\] in spite of receiving heat consistently.