Is it possible to boil water without changing the temperature

The boiling point of water, or any liquid, varies according to the surrounding atmospheric pressure. A liquid boils, or begins turning to vapor, when its internal vapor pressure equals the atmospheric pressure. But pressure drops as you gain elevation — say, by driving from Los Angeles to Denver — because there are fewer air molecules pressing on you.

In Denver, the atmospheric pressure is only about 12 pounds per square inch, compared with Putting a liquid in a partial vacuum also will lower its boiling point. In La Rinconada, a mining town in the Peruvian Andes that, at more than 16, feet, is the highest permanently inhabited town in the world, water will boil at about degrees.

At another extreme, in Death Valley, Calif. Why does it matter where you cook? The answer has to do with boiling water. Go ask some people on the street about the boiling temperature of water.

There are many awesome things about water—one interesting "factoid" is that on the surface of the Earth you can find water in all three phases: solid we call this ice , liquid water, and as a gas.

We call the gas phase of water " water vapor. You might think that you need to boil liquid water to create water vapor—but you don't. You just need some liquid water at room temperature or any temperature. Picture a glass of water. If you could zoom in with super vision not actually possible , you would see that this water is made of a bunch of molecules—water molecules.

Although these molecules are themselves made of three atoms two hydrogens and one oxygen , let's just think of them as tiny balls. These tiny water balls are moving around in the water but stay fairly close to their ball neighbors. This motion isn't due to currents in the water, instead this is thermal motion. Imagine these tiny balls jiggling around in a giant collection of balls. The hotter the water, the greater the motion of these water balls.

But wait! The speeds of the water particles aren't all the same. Although there is an average ball speed, some are going faster and some are going slower. It's just like the height of a group of adult humans. There is an average height, but everyone is not the same. Some people are VERY tall, but that's just a small fraction of the total group. If you have a glass of water sitting out on a table, the water balls don't just stay as a liquid. Some of these balls have enough thermal energy to break away and become free.

Free from the liquid stage means the water ball is now a gas—water vapor. To experience this, put a container of bottled water into a bowl of ice. Small particles act as nucleation sites to promote freezing.

Add salt to the ice to lower the temperature. Once water freezes into ice, the ice can be cooled all the way down to absolute zero. When water vaporizes into steam, the steam can be heated up to the point where water breaks apart into its component atoms. Think of higher pressure as making that escape more difficult by offering a counteracting force.

For another example, put water at room temperature into a vacuum chamber and begin removing the air. Eventually, the boiling temperature will fall below the water temperature and boiling will begin without heating. Answered by: Paul Walorski, B. Physics, Part-time Physics Instructor Boiling just means allowing the particles of a liquid to separate and begin flying about independently as a gas. There are two competing forces at work: the kinetic energy of the individual particles, which all together is the heat in the substance, and the attractive forces holding the particles together.

In addition, the pressure of other substances on the surface of the liquid can squeeze the liquid, pushing on the liquid's molecules and holding them together. Thus, in order to let the liquid's molecules zoom off as a gas, you can: 1.