"TwistyCreek" wrote in message
...
Gilligan wrote:

When water goes from liquid to vapor it is vaporization.

Boiling is a subset of vaporization. vaporization caused by heating.

No. More accurately it's described as attaining a state where some of
the water vaporizes.

Is water superheated by a microwave oven (above 100C, yet no vaporization
because of lack of nucleation) considered boiling water?

That *can* be achieved by heating, indeed this
is the most common way of doing it. But it's not the only way, and even
heating water to the boiling point is something that varies under the
relatively insignificant differences in air pressure between sea level
and a moderate mountain.

Heating is the most common method for boiling water for a number of
reasons. It's convenient, and technically less complicated than
creating a sufficient vacuum. Also, boiling water is hardly ever a
goal, it's a step in a process where higher water temperatures are
desired for other things.

Sometimes boiling is undesirable as in hot water systems. The pressure is
kept high to raise the boiling point so no vapor forms in the system.



When water goes from ice to vapor it is sublimation. It is not boiling.

Does frozen carbon dioxide cause water to boil when you throw it in? Is
the
carbon dioxide boiling? Is it sublimating?

Irrelevant. A totally broken analogy. Two completely different processes
that only cause a visually similar effect.

Correct. I asked these questions to test understanding of the phenomena.


So the bottom line: Boiling water is water with vapor bubbles in it? It
doesn't matter what means induced these bubbles? Does boiling water have
some unique property?