11 Facts About Latent heat

Latent heat is energy released or absorbed, by a body or a thermodynamic system, during a constant-temperature process — usually a first-order phase transition.

Latent heat can be understood as energy in hidden form which is supplied or extracted to change the state of a substance without changing its temperature.

Black used the term in the context of calorimetry where a Latent heat transfer caused a volume change in a body while its temperature was constant.

In contrast to latent heat, sensible heat is energy transferred as heat, with a resultant temperature change in a body.

Latent heat is associated with the change of phase of atmospheric or ocean water, vaporization, condensation, freezing or melting, whereas sensible heat is energy transferred that is evident in change of the temperature of the atmosphere or ocean, or ice, without those phase changes, though it is associated with changes of pressure and volume.

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Latent heat is energy released or absorbed, by a body or a thermodynamic system, during a constant-temperature process.

In meteorology, latent heat flux is the flux of energy from the Earth's surface to the atmosphere that is associated with evaporation or transpiration of water at the surface and subsequent condensation of water vapor in the troposphere.

Latent heat flux has been commonly measured with the Bowen ratio technique, or more recently since the mid-1900s by the eddy covariance method.

The term latent heat was introduced into calorimetry around 1750 by Joseph Black—commissioned by producers of Scotch whisky in search of ideal quantities of fuel and water for their distilling process—to studying system changes, such as of volume and pressure, when the thermodynamic system was held at constant temperature in a thermal bath.

Black deduced that as much latent heat as was supplied into boiling the distillate had to be absorbed to condense it again .

Specific latent heat expresses the amount of energy in the form of heat required to completely effect a phase change of a unit of mass, usually, of a substance as an intensive property:.