HEAT TRANSFER An example is boiling water. As you add heat to water, its temperature increases...

until you reach the boiling point. Then, as you add heat, the temperature stays constant until the water is completely boiled off. Cooking, at its simplest definition, is preparing food through the use of heat. The different methods of cooking or heat transfer are broken down into conduction, convection, and radiation. Every method of cooking involves one or more of these heat transfer methods. Pan-frying or sauting are common forms of conduction. The pan heats up and, through direct contact with the food, cooks the food. Fat or oil used in the frying provides uniform contact with heat, lubrication to prevent sticking, and some flavor of its own. Oddly enough, cooking in oil is considered a dry technique because the oil acts more like a cooking material than anything else. The moisture in the food will still be contained because it will not mix with the oil surrounding it. Convection relies much on the density of the fluid. Liquid convection, either through boiling, steaming, or deep frying, is a much more effective transfer of heat than gas convection. This is why boiling a potato is much faster than baking. The denser the fluid, the more often the molecules collide with the food and the fast the food heats up. Grilling and broiling, the former with heat below the food, and the latter with heat above, are two methods of radiation cooking. Of course there is convection from the air in between the heat source and the food and conduction from the grate, but the heat is primarily radiated. LATENT HEAT OF FUSION Weather, thermoregulation, global warming and industrial cooling all depend on the high latent heat of water and its ability to transform heat to work and vice versa, and to move energy from one place to another. Imagine a pot of boiling water. To keep it on the boil lots of heat has to be supplied. As soon as the heat is reduced it stops boiling and steam stops coming off. Consider the flame or other heat source that is needed to keep it boiling. You wouldn't want to contact such a concentrated heat source directly. (Warning: please do not put your hand on the stove to confirm this!) This is the reasons that burns caused by steam can be so severe. Besides the heat of the steam, some of the steam will condense on the skin, releasing its latent heat of condensation. But when that small amount of water condenses out of steam on your skin it releases just that amount of heat. This is why a burn from steam can be more severe than a burn by boiling water itself, if the quantity of steam is significant. This is what drives some types of storms, including thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes and typhoons. Such storms are driven by "heat engines" based on water vapor. The key to such systems is rising warm air containing water vapor. As it rises it expands (because the atmospheric pressure is lower the higher you go) and as it expands it cools (the same amount of heat is spread through a larger volume--adiabatic cooling). nd other industrial facilities use evaporative cooling. Steam turbines require a condenser to

cool the steam after it leaves the turbine so that it condenses into water and can be pumped back through the cycle. Such condensers often use evaporative cooling by spraying or dripping water over coils carrying hot water from the system. At big power plants these may be enclosed in characteristic hyperboloid chimney-like structures to provide draft to move the moisture-laden air out of the cooling unit. Other systems use fans. [Here is a video of the inside of a cooling tower showing water being sprayed over cooling circuits.]