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A glass is semifilled with liquid water and place in a room at 20 oc. after some time, part of the water evaporates. what happened to the average kinetic energy and the average potential energy of the water particles that escaped to the gas phase?

User Darque
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2 Answers

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Final answer:

When water evaporates, the molecules that escape to the gas phase have an increase in average kinetic energy and a decrease in average potential energy.

Step-by-step explanation:

When a liquid, such as water, evaporates, the molecules that escape into the gas phase have an increase in average kinetic energy and a decrease in average potential energy compared to when they were in the liquid phase.

The increase in average kinetic energy is due to the fact that molecules in the gas phase move faster than those in the liquid phase. This increase in kinetic energy allows the molecules to overcome the intermolecular forces and escape into the gas phase.

On the other hand, the decrease in average potential energy occurs because the intermolecular forces holding the liquid together are weaker than those between molecules in the gas phase. As a result, the average potential energy of the molecules that escape to the gas phase is lower.

User Atanas Korchev
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Water is placed at room temperature at 20 degree C

now after some water evaporate at room temperature

so here we can say speed of water molecules will not change as the temperature is same after evaporation

as we know that total kinetic energy is given by


KE = (f)/(2) nRT

since temperature is same then energy will not change here

now as water evaporate to vapors then we can say that here all molecules are separated more in vapor phase so force of interaction will be less in this phase

And since potential energy depends on the force so potential energy will decrease in this phase

User Dave Sottimano
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