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Vaporization (vapourisation in British English) of an element or compound is aphase transition from theliquid phase tovapor.[1] There are two types of vaporization:evaporation andboiling. Evaporation is asurface phenomenon, whereas boiling is a bulk phenomenon (a phenomenon in which the whole object or substance is involved in the process).
Evaporation is a phase transition from the liquid phase to vapor (a state of substance belowcritical temperature) that occurs at temperatures below theboiling temperature at a given pressure. Evaporation occurson the surface. Evaporation only occurs when thepartial pressure ofvapor of a substance is less than theequilibrium vapor pressure. For example, due to constantly decreasing pressures, vapor pumped out of a solution will eventually leave behind a cryogenic liquid.
Boiling is also a phase transition from the liquid phase to gas phase, but boiling is the formation of vapor as bubbles of vaporbelow the surface of the liquid. Boiling occurs when the equilibrium vapor pressure of the substance is greater than or equal to theatmospheric pressure. The temperature at which boiling occurs is the boiling temperature, or boiling point. The boiling point varies with the pressure of the environment.
Sublimation is a direct phase transition from the solid phase to the gas phase, skipping the intermediate liquid phase.
The termvaporization has also been used in a colloquial or hyperbolic way to refer to the physical destruction of an object that is exposed to intense heat or explosive force, where the object is actually blasted into small pieces rather than literally converted to gaseous form. Examples of this usage include the "vaporization" of the uninhabitedMarshall Island ofElugelab in the 1952Ivy Mike thermonuclear test.[2] Many other examples can be found throughout the variousMythBusters episodes that have involved explosives, chief among them beingCement Mix-Up, where they "vaporized" a cement truck with ANFO.[3]
At the moment of a large enoughmeteor orcomet impact,bolide detonation, anuclear fission,thermonuclear fusion, or theoreticalantimatter weapon detonation, aflux of so manygamma ray,x-ray,ultraviolet, visuallight andheatphotons strikes matter in a such brief amount of time (a great number of high-energy photons, many overlapping in the same physical space) that all molecules lose their atomic bonds (atomization) and "fly apart". All atoms lose theirelectron shells and become positively charged ions (ionization), in turn emitting photons of a slightly lower energy than they had absorbed. All such matter becomes a gas of nuclei and electrons which rise into the air due to the extremely high temperature or bond to each other as they cool. The matter vaporized this way is immediately aplasma in a state of maximumentropy and this state steadily reduces via the factor of passingtime due to natural processes in thebiosphere and the effects ofphysics at normaltemperatures andpressures.
A similar process occurs during ultrashort pulselaser ablation, where the highflux of incomingelectromagnetic radiation strips the target material's surface of electrons, leaving positively charged atoms which undergo acoulomb explosion.[4]
To From | Solid | Liquid | Gas | Plasma |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solid | Melting | Sublimation | ||
| Liquid | Freezing | Vaporization | ||
| Gas | Deposition | Condensation | Ionization | |
| Plasma | Recombination |
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