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submitted 11 months ago by m3t00@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world
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[-] Oszilloraptor@feddit.de 20 points 11 months ago

Uh, I'm surprised.

I learned this in school more than a decade ago.

Did my teacher accidentally lied the truth?

[-] rdyoung@lemmy.world 21 points 11 months ago

Light is energy. This isn't surprising to me at all.

[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 30 points 11 months ago

The energy transfer to evaporate water is the heat. This is specifically without heat.

They proved more water was evaporated than the heat applied to the water.

The theory being the light knocks away water particles at the surface of the water without heating them.

[-] bouh@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago

So, in fact, water will evaporate without heat because of the lack of equilibrium between air and water, until the air is wet enough for the process to stop.

Discovering that light vaporise water is not the same as discovering that water vaporise itself without heat. It is an interesting discovery nonetheless.

[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 7 points 11 months ago

Up to 3 times more water evaporated than heat energy the light could supply.

It's pretty massive if true.

[-] PeachMan@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Yeah that's the part that confuses me....how does one transfer energy to something without generating any heat?

[-] JanoRis@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago

They explain that in the article. Light barely gets absorbed in water, which is why you can see several meters deep in water. Only the absorbed part can turn into heat.

They measured an effect that partly evaporates water more efficiently than the heat influx can. The theory mentioned in the article is, that light directly knocks out water molecules at the water/air surface boundary. The measured effect was the most effective with light of a green wavelength

[-] TheOneCurly@lemmy.theonecurly.page 4 points 11 months ago

Heat doesn't really exist at an individual particle level, it only describes the average kinetic energy of a large number of particles. "Normal" evaporation occurs because all the water molecules are jiggling around fast enough that sometimes some get knocked off at the top and fly away. The theory from this paper says that light can strike a single water molecule just right that it breaks off without help from the others.

Saying this is "without heat" means that the light isn't simply increasing the average kinetic energy at the top of the water and speeding up the rate of "normal" evaporation. They think it's specifically acting on a single molecule at a time.

this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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