"Gene Kearns" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:55:20 -0400, "RCE" wrote:



Steam is a gas and behaves as such. Water vapor is not a gas.


You guys may be entirely correct, but if so, I can't confirm it by any
source available to me.....

Looks like I may have been mistaken, at least according to my Google
search:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam

"In physical chemistry, and in engineering, steam refers to vaporized water.
It is a pure, completely invisible gas (for mist see below), which at
standard atmospheric pressure has a temperature of around 100 degrees
Celsius, and occupies about 1,600 times the volume of liquid water (steam
can of course be much hotter than the boiling point of water; such steam is
usually called superheated steam).

In common speech, steam most often refers to the white mist that condenses
above boiling water as the hot vapor ("steam" in the first sense) mixes with
the cooler air. After gaseous steam has intermixed with air, it is no longer
properly called steam and is instead referred to as water vapor."


http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/va...eam-d_609.html
"In superheated vapor the temperature is higher than the boiling point
temperature corresponding to the pressure. The vapor can not exist in
contact with the fluid, nor contain fluid particles. An increase in pressure
or decrease in temperature will not - within limits - condensate out liquid
particles in the vapor. Highly superheated vapors are gases that
approximately follow the general gas law."

I guess there is a fine line on this which I was not aware of.