what produces more severe burns boiling water and steam
Answers
Steam produces more severe burns than boiling water even though both are at 100oC because steam contains more heat, in the form of latent heat, than boiling water.
Answer:
Steam produces more severe burns.
Explanation:
Both boiling water and steam are of the same temperature, but steam also contains latent heat of vapourisation because of it being the result of water changing its state from one in which the particles are more closely packed together to one in which the particles are farther apart.
Such a change of state requires the particles of a substance to overcome the forces of attraction between them. Once the particles reach their melting or boiling point, they absorb kinetic energy from the heat being supplied to them, and use it to overcome these interparticle forces of attraction. This kinetic energy gets stored in the particles, and is called latent heat ('latent' means 'hidden') as it doesn't increase the temperature of the substance and can't be detected by a thermometer.
There are two types of latent heat: Latent heat of fusion, which is gained by particles when they change state from solid to liquid, and latent heat of vapourisation, which is gained by particles while changing state from liquid to gas.
The latent heat which comes into play in the case of water boiling to form steam is the latent heat of vapourisation.
When steam touches our skin, it loses heat to our skin. This heat also includes the latent heat of vapourisation. However when boiling water touches our skin, it doesn't lose any latent heat to our skin. Due to this, the burns caused by steam are more severe.