In order to know what a gas is we can look at its Wikipedia article:. A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms e. Water vapor, i. Because the visible fog, or the clouds, above boiling water, which are called "vapor" in everyday language, consist of little droplets of fluid not gaseous! Paradoxically, water vapor in the scientific sense is exactly what you don't see in the picture.
It's just that some go through this transformation at a high temperature and others at a low temperature. Water's transition point at sea-level pressure is degrees C, so you mostly experience it as a liquid. But below its boiling point, water still evaporates into the air in relatively small amounts, until the "saturation point" is reached for a given temperature and pressure.
This is what weathermen are talking about when they talk about "percent humidity". When water is near the saturation point near " percent humidity" it switches back and forth between liquid and gas, and so tiny droplets of water can end up suspended in mid-air. It is these tiny droplets that you see in fog, clouds, the "steam" arising out of a tea kettle, etc. When water molecule changed to vapor at ideal environment it's invisible by naked eye. At condensation state molecules reflect light rays by bending principle, therefore we can observe this vapor condensation like veil smoke effect.
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How are water vapors not visible?
Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 10 months ago. Active 4 years, 10 months ago. Viewed 11k times. However, take a look at this picture: Isn't that water vapor? Improve this question. Okama Ksakas Okama Ksakas 1 1 gold badge 6 6 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges. In many power plants today, steam is used to drive turbines heated by various means. In the case of a steam leak, the steam is at tremendously high pressure and temperature. This means fast streams of steam that don't start to form visible condensation for feet, or more.
It's also terribly noisy, so you can't hear where the leak is. When looking for these leaks, one waves a broom handle in front of them. They know when they found the leak because the steam will literally cut the broom handle in half! That is invisible water vapor! No, they not - if you can see them, they're not water vapor, because water vapor is invisible.
Show 3 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Gert Gert I mean, visible spectrum clearly bounces of, but does IR also scatter on water droplets? Add a comment. Take glass kettle and put it on a stove and boil the water in it.
Suppose we have small volume of hot water vapour only surrounded by cold humid air. The temperature will equalize through heat dissipation. Water vapour will diffuse in the humid air. A DNA molecule has many hydrogen bonds. But it has covalent bonds that are the reason we call it a molecule.
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Share More sharing options Followers 0. Recommended Posts. NathanUT Posted May 3, Posted May 3, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options Cap'n Refsmmat Posted May 3, You're right.
If you want authority, here's the Oxford English Dictionary on the subject: In popular language, applied to the visible vapour which floats in the air in the form of a white cloud or mist, and which consists of minute globules or vesicles of liquid water suspended in a mixture of gaseous water and air. NathanUT Posted May 4, Posted May 4, If you want authority, here's the Oxford English Dictionary on the subject: It's the difference between scientific and colloquial usage that makes it controversial.
TonyMcC Posted May 4, Posted May 25, Basi Posted May 27, Posted May 27, Your colleagues are definitely misinformed if they think otherwise. Posted November 14, CaptainPanic Posted November 14, Moderator Note sidhu, Please note that the thread is already 2 years old.
Posted November 15, John Cuthber Posted November 23, Posted November 23, An example of a hydrocarbon combustion reaction is shown below to illustrate how water is created during this process. Since water vapour is released when hydrocarbons are burned, water vapour is a fairly large component of the flue gases released from coal fired power plants or natural gas power plants. A surprisingly large amount of water is released when coal is burned.
For example, when burning bituminous coal roughly 0. This means that tonnes of water are be produced per hour at a large-scale coal fired power plant.
Water vapour moves across the Earth's surface, cycling through a variety of storage areas. It is this cycling that shapes the climate of different regions across the globe, providing precipitation and supporting life. As the climate changes, the distribution and cycling of water vapour changes as well. Water vapour is actually the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and the most potent of all the greenhouse gases as a result of its chemical structure.
Its presence accounts for around two thirds of the natural greenhouse effect. As a greenhouse gas, water vapour serves creates a positive feedback cycle for global warming. This means that the warmer the world gets, the more water vapour will exist in the air as evaporation rates from oceans , lakes, and streams increase. Human activities do not increase the overall water vapour content in the atmosphere, but human activities can cause more water to evaporate as a result of increased temperature of the atmosphere.
Thus anthropogenic warming is enhanced by a greater water vapour content in the atmosphere. Fossil Fuels. Nuclear Fuels. Acid Rain.
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