Freeze drying is a process in which substances, such as foods, are dried by placing them in a vacuum chamber and lowering the atmospheric pressure around them. How does the lowered atmospheric pressure speed the drying process, and why does it cause the temperature of the food to drop?
Decreased the atmospheric pressure results in decreased partial pressure of water, hence a lower humidity. So evaporation of water from food, for example, will be enhanced. The molecules of water most likely to break away from the food will be those with the greatest velocities. Those remaining thus have a lower average velocity and a lower temperature. This can (and does) result in the freezing and drying of the food; hence the process is aptly named freeze drying.
Watch different types of molecules form a solid, liquid, or gas. Add or remove heat and watch the phase change. Change the temperature or volume of a container and see a pressure-temperature diagram respond in real time. Relate the interaction potential to the forces between molecules.
Section summary
Relative humidity is the fraction of water vapor in a gas compared to the saturation value.
The saturation vapor density can be determined from the vapor pressure for a given temperature.
Percent relative humidity is defined to be
The dew point is the temperature at which air reaches 100% relative humidity.
Conceptual questions
Because humidity depends only on water’s vapor pressure and temperature, are the saturation vapor densities listed in
[link] valid in an atmosphere of helium at a pressure of
, rather than air? Are those values affected by altitude on Earth?
Why does a beaker of
water placed in a vacuum chamber start to boil as the chamber is evacuated (air is pumped out of the chamber)? At what pressure does the boiling begin? Would food cook any faster in such a beaker?
(a) What is the vapor pressure of water at
? (b) What percentage of atmospheric pressure does this correspond to? (c) What percent of
air is water vapor if it has 100% relative humidity? (The density of dry air at
is
.)
Pressure cookers increase cooking speed by raising the boiling temperature of water above its value at atmospheric pressure. (a) What pressure is necessary to raise the boiling point to
? (b) What gauge pressure does this correspond to?
the transfer of energy by a force that causes an object to be displaced; the product of the component of the force in the direction of the displacement and the magnitude of the displacement
A wave is described by the function D(x,t)=(1.6cm) sin[(1.2cm^-1(x+6.8cm/st] what are:a.Amplitude b. wavelength c. wave number d. frequency e. period f. velocity of speed.
A body is projected upward at an angle 45° 18minutes with the horizontal with an initial speed of 40km per second. In hoe many seconds will the body reach the ground then how far from the point of projection will it strike. At what angle will the horizontal will strike
Suppose hydrogen and oxygen are diffusing through air. A small amount of each is released simultaneously. How much time passes before the hydrogen is 1.00 s ahead of the oxygen? Such differences in arrival times are used as an analytical tool in gas chromatography.
the science concerned with describing the interactions of energy, matter, space, and time; it is especially interested in what fundamental mechanisms underlie every phenomenon