Questions tagged [condensation]
135 questions
51
votes
4 answers
Being in a solid state, why is ice slippery?
Saying that ice is slippery is like saying that water is wet -- it's something we've known for as long as we can be said to have known anything. Presumably, humans as a species knew ice was slippery before we knew fire was hot, or that it existed.…
Sajin Shereef
- 765
40
votes
10 answers
Condensation of Water. Classroom Controversy
In our test there was a question that went like so:
Question 4 You have a glass of iced water on an unshaded picnic table and went for a walk for 30 minutes. When you return you noticed
the glass has water on the outside of it.
a. In terms of…
class_question
- 401
39
votes
2 answers
Why doesn't the windshield fog up where my kid drew on it with her fingers?
A few weeks ago the inside of my car windshield was fogged up and my older kid used her finger to draw a face in the condensation.
Weeks later, the windshield fogged up again, and the face became visible again. My younger kid asked why.
“The older…
Mark Dominus
- 2,727
17
votes
2 answers
Why doesn't breath condense around poop of flies on the window's glass?
One day it was raining outside and I was breathing on the glass of my window. I noticed that around the spots of fly poop there is a circle where vapor does not condense. With time the circle becomes larger and larger as the condensation slowly…
HAL9000
- 464
13
votes
2 answers
Burning Fuels and Producing Water
I have a question about Optics and how this links to burning fuels in a combustion reaction.
If I have hexane,
the following reaction occurs:
hexane + oxygen $\rightarrow$ carbon dioxide + water vapour
Now, I have a question.
Why don't we tend…
user55213
- 257
10
votes
2 answers
Why does desiccant cool down air?
I put a lot of desiccant inside a large airtight container and left it for a while, then I opened it and put my hand inside, I can feel the air is much cooler, why is that?
Sujal Singh
- 227
9
votes
1 answer
Why do we have a non-zero quark vacuum condensate even though the QCD coupling goes to zero in the deep infrared?
It is well-known that QCD has a Landau pole at $\Lambda_{\rm QCD}\sim 200$ MeV, which means that the perturbative QCD coupling becomes strong at this scale. Conventionally, this is claimed to be the reason why quarks condense at this scale and why…
Thomas
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9
votes
1 answer
Quantum fields and condensates
From my fairly naive understanding of quantum field theory (QFT), a quantum field $\hat{\phi}$ is an operator field, i.e. for each spacetime point $x^{\mu}$, $\hat{\phi}(x)$ is an operator acting on the corresponding Fock space of particle states.…
Will
- 3,163
9
votes
1 answer
How to calculate the volume of water in a certain amount of air, given the relative humidity?
If, according to the weather forecast, the current humidity is 90%, how can I calculate the volume of water that could be extracted from a certain volume of that air?
Amr Bekhit
- 227
8
votes
3 answers
Condensation on the side of a cloud chamber
I'm trying to build a cloud chamber using a peltier thermoelectric cooler. So far, I've managed to detect some particles, but their trails are very weak (I've used a high voltage generator, about 4kV, obtained from an electrical fly swatter. I'm…
Luke__
- 611
7
votes
0 answers
What does it mean by "condensation" of anyons?
My question is motivated from the paper Boundary degeneracy of topological order by Juven Wang and Xiao Gang Wen.
Consider a (2+1)D system with boundary, described by abelian Chern-Simons theory. Due to the bulk-boundary correspondence, its boundary…
Laplacian
- 1,133
6
votes
0 answers
How far we can see in the thickest possible fog?
There is quite foggy day today here, I cannot see end of the street. This made me think about how much worse can it be.
So here is my question: how thick a fog can be? What's the smallest visibility distance possible?
By visibility distance I mean…
Calmarius
- 8,428
6
votes
2 answers
Why don't liquid aerosols rapidly vanish by evaporation?
Liquid aerosols are known to be relatively stable.
However, given their immense surface area and tiny volume, we would expect them to rapidly vanish by evaporation.
Why are liquid aerosols unexpectedly stable to evaporation?
Ritesh Singh
- 1,519
6
votes
1 answer
Size of a raindrop
Thinking about the fact that raindrops come with a typical size I was wondering how this can be determined.
I am pretty sure that the friction with air and the quantity of water in the clouds are involved with the upper limit of the raindrop size…
AoZora
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6
votes
3 answers
Condensed water inside a bottle
So, I noticed that in a closed plastic bottle (say only less than half full) little droplets of water were condensed on one side of the internal surface. That was the side exposed to sun rays.
Why should water condense were sun rays hit more…
AoZora
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