2/5/12 Don’t go chasing butterflies…

Repition is a sign of stupidity, so I shall say it again. I am a very bored person. Have you ever heard of the phrase “A housewife never see’s a pot boiling” so I had to do two things in my boredom:
1. Find out what boiling is.
2. Try the myth out.

So I looked up boiling and I found out it’s what water does. It’s called a phase change. It is when a phase: liquid or solid or gas(more on that later) is changed into another phase. Phase changes include melting, boiling, freezing, and a slew of others. I also discovered that they all substances go through phase changes at certain temperatures. As a devout follower of my blog and personal cult, you know temperature is a measurement of heat energy, which is warmth produced by particles bouncing around. All substances do this at different temperatures, like water boiling and condensing(This is a process where the aforementioned gas turns into a liquid. more on it later) at 98°C and freezing and melting at 0°C. Boiling is when water heats to a certain temperature(for water: 98°C) when so much heat energy is added to the substance that the bonds that keep water particles relatively close and solid particles tight are broken and they start bouncing around and hitting each other with such ferocity

Grrrr angry particles!

that they spread far apart and become a gas. A gas is a substance with particles  that move very rapidly and can take up any amount of space: having indefinite volume and shape. Water has definite volume but indefinite shape, which is how it can take the shape of its container, but only fill it to a degree. Solids have a definite shape and definite volume so they will stay the way they are so say a glass with a puppy in it wont have the puppy become a glass shaped atrocity.

Not liquid. Adorable, but not liquid

I also found out about condensation. It’s when a gas loses its heat energy and becomes a liquid again. When gas is hot, it wants to rise. It does this because the particles are spread so thinly they become lighter then regular air and float. When they get too high, the air gets colder and therfore, the heat energy
of a substance is lost and it comes falling back down to earth. This is seen in rain when water that has evaporated(same as boiling) from the earth condenses and comes back down as rain. This is known as the water cycle.

Promising monontony for water since 4,000,000,000BC

Anyway, I tried this by putting water in a pot on the stove top, turning the heat on and watching intently. But within 10 minutes I got bored and decided to take a break from watching it to go outside and shout at butterflies.

YOU THINK YOU’RE SO GREAT WITH YOUR ANTENNAE AND MIGRATORY PATTERNS DON’T YOU‽

When I came back I found the pot boiling, most of my water gone, and a restraining order from the butterflies. I immeditaly took a temperature reading from the pot and found the water to be at 98°C, the exact point water boils at. This confused me. Its the exact point water boils at, but the water is half gone, shouldnt the temperature have gone up? So I did some investigation and found out when a liquid boils, it’s temperature stays the same until it’s done boiling. Same with all other phase changes, as this graph shows.

Yeah this one

The heat pleateau’s when a substance is going through a phase change. It also shows how heat energy will change a substance in that it changes phases. So in the end, I found out that I can’t prove old wives tales wrong, a slew of new information, and butterflies take restraining orders very seriously.

Im not permited to be within 300 meters of any medow in spring.