Many people explain the plateau on the heating chart as a period where temperature stays constant because of kinetic energy being used to break the bonds. This does not make sense because when you are increasing the kinetic energy of particles, they move around more which can eventually overcome the attractive forces. Or at least thats what I have been taught. If the kinetic energy is still increasing during the phase change to break these bonds, why would the temperature not increase. Does it have to do with the system as a whole? Also most explanations say that the kinetic energy just goes to potential energy during a phase change without actually explaining why that is.
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