vaporization

vaporization, change of a liquid or solid substance to a gas or vapor. There is fundamentally no difference between the terms gas and vapor, but gas is used commonly to describe a substance that appears in the gaseous state under standard conditions of pressure and temperature, and vapor to describe the gaseous state of a substance that appears ordinarily as a liquid or solid. Although most substances undergo changes of state in the order of solid to liquid to gas as the temperature is raised, a few change directly from solid to gas in a process known as sublimation.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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