Video Transcript
Some water vapour in a container is
cooled. It first condenses to become water
and then freezes to become ice. The temperature of the contents of
the container are recorded every minute, and the results are shown in the graph. What state was the water in between
zero and five minutes?
Before we answer this question,
let’s take a look at the graph. It shows us the temperature of the
water in degrees Celsius versus the time in minutes after this water vapour has
begun cooling. If we look on the graph at the
initial moment, time 𝑡 equals zero, we see that the temperature of this water at
that point was above 120 degrees Celsius. This confirms what we’re told in
the problem statement that this water at this point is vapour. It’s in the gas phase. And, in fact, this is part of the
focus of this first question, which asks us what state was the water in between zero
and five minutes.
Looking on our horizontal axis, we
see zero is right here and five minutes is right there. If we trace those two time values
up until they intersect our curve, then we see the portion of the curve we’re
interested in. It’s this portion right here. We can see that at a time value of
exactly five minutes, that’s when the temperature of this water sample becomes equal
to a 100 degrees Celsius. So up until five minutes, the
temperature of this sample was always above that. That tells us the water is too hot
to be in its liquid phase and certainly too hot to be in its solid phase. This means that over this time
interval, from zero to five minutes, the water is in the gas phase. Now let’s look at a few more
questions about this graph.
Our next question asks, what state
was the water vapour in between 40 and 45 minutes?
To figure this out, we locate those
two time values on our horizontal axis. We can see that for this portion of
the curve, between 40 and 45 minutes, the temperature of our water is always at or
below zero degrees Celsius. And in addition to that, if we look
a little bit to the left of 40 minutes, at this flat portion of the curve here, we
can tell that what’s going on there is the water is going from a liquid to a solid,
liquid to ice. This means that at 40 minutes
exactly, we’ve completed that phase transition and our water is now entirely
frozen. It’s solid ice. This tells us that for this time
interval between 40 and 45 minutes, our water is in the solid state of matter.
Next, we want to know what word
describes what is happening between five and 15 minutes.
Between five and 15 minutes, we see
that our curve is going through this flat portion. It’s not changing temperature, but
time is elapsing. Based on the description in the
problem statement, as well as the title of this graph, we know that even though the
temperature of our water isn’t changing over this time, there’s still an energy
exchange going on. That is, energy is being taken away
from the water. Now, if energy is leaving the water
but its temperature isn’t changing, that can only mean one thing, that the water at
that point is going through a phase transition, a change from one state of matter to
another. And indeed, that’s exactly what’s
going on between five and 15 minutes on this curve.
Now, we saw earlier that over this
portion of the curve, from zero to five minutes, our water was in the gas state. And if we then look at the portion
of the curve after 15 minutes, this portion right here, we can see that based on the
temperature range of that curve, the water must be in the liquid state. That’s because it’s between zero
degrees and 100 degrees Celsius. This indicates that this transition
here between five and 15 minutes is from the gas to the liquid phase. Whenever material makes the phase
change of going from a gas to a liquid, there is a particular name for that
process. The word is condensation. That describes the particular
change in phase that we’re seeing between five and 15 minutes from a gas to a
liquid.
And finally, our last question asks
this: What word describes what is happening between 35 and 40 minutes?
Looking at that portion of the
curve, we see once again it’s flat, indicating that this is a period where our water
is being cooled. But its temperature is not
changing. That’s the hallmark of a phase
transition, a change from one state of matter to another. Now in this case, unlike before,
this change of phase is happening at a temperature of zero degrees Celsius. For water, that’s the crossover
temperature between the liquid and the solid phases. Because our water is being cooled
over this time period, we know that it’s moving from a warmer to a cooler state over
this interval. In other words, it’s going from a
liquid to a solid. The word for describing that phase
change, that transition from a material being a liquid to being a solid, is one
we’re familiar with. It’s freezing. As the water goes from a liquid
phase to a solid phase over this time interval, it’s going through the process of
freezing.
