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Understanding Heating and Cooling Curves

The heating curve describes how solids expand and increase in temperature as they are heated, leading to melting where temperature remains constant until the solid transforms into a liquid. Continued heating of the liquid increases kinetic energy, resulting in evaporation and eventually reaching the boiling point where gas bubbles form. The cooling curve outlines the reverse process where gases condense into liquids and then freeze into solids, with temperature remaining constant during state changes.

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6 views2 pages

Understanding Heating and Cooling Curves

The heating curve describes how solids expand and increase in temperature as they are heated, leading to melting where temperature remains constant until the solid transforms into a liquid. Continued heating of the liquid increases kinetic energy, resulting in evaporation and eventually reaching the boiling point where gas bubbles form. The cooling curve outlines the reverse process where gases condense into liquids and then freeze into solids, with temperature remaining constant during state changes.

Uploaded by

nomhleprincessmoyo
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© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

HEATING CURVE

EXPLAINING THE HEATING CURVE

When a solid is heated the particles gain kinetic energy and vibrate faster. This makes them ‘push’
their neighbouring particles further away from themselves. This causes an increase in the volume of
the solid, and the solid expands. As the particles gain kinetic energy, the temperature increases

During melting, the temperature remains constant, because, the heat energy is used to weaken the
forces of attraction between particles. The regular pattern of the structure breaks down, changing
into a liquid i.e the particles can now move around each other.

Continued heating causes the liquid particles to move around even faster as their kinetic energy
increases. Some particles at the surface of the liquid have enough energy to overcome the forces of
attraction between themselves and the other particles in the liquid and they escape to form a gas.
The liquid begins to evaporate as a gas is formed

Eventually, a temperature is reached at which the particles are trying to escape from the liquid so
quickly that bubbles of gas actually start to form inside the bulk of the liquid. This temperature is
called the boiling point of the substance. At the boiling point the pressure of the gas created above
the liquid equals that in the air – atmospheric pressure.

COOLING CURVE

The reverse processes of condensing and freezing occur on cooling .

When a gas is cooled, the kinetic energy of the particles decreases, and the particles move closer
together. The forces of attraction between the particles now become significant and cause the gas
to condense into a liquid. When a liquid is cooled it freezes to form a solid. In each of these changes
energy is given out

NOTE:

 Whenever a change of state occurs, the temperature remains constant during the
change
 Solids which have high melting points have stronger forces of attraction between
their particles than those which have low melting points.
 Liquids with high boiling points have stronger forces between their particles than
liquids with low boiling points
 A pure substance has a fixed boiling and melting points eg. Pure water boils at
1000C and melts at 00C.
 Solids and liquids can be identified from their characteristic melting and boiling
points
 Evaporation occurs at the surface of a liquid. It takes places at any temperature,
even below of the liquid.

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