Re: The importance of being pedant

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Leigh Palmer wrote:

> > I wonder how many *educators* believe that gases are fundamentally
> > different than vapors, and that vapors always contain suspended droplets.
> > When misconceptions appear in textbooks, they usually don't stay limited
> > to students' minds alone.
>
> I would be surprised (no, astonished) to find that any teacher of
> physics holds this misconception.

I wouldn't.  At the K-12 level, "vapor = fog/clouds/steam" appears to be a
common misconception.  I note that human minds tend to tolerate
contradictory facts by placing them in separate mental pigeonholes,
therefore higher learning is not guaranteed to displace misconceptions.
Also, if we're bombarded with the pop-culture belief that clouds/fog/steam
is "water vapor", we might become infected without realizing it.  I do
agree that physics teachers will have defeated this misconception
(although a small minority might still describe clouds as "water vapor" if
they aren't careful.)  I suspect that the misconception is not rare in
science educators in general (I include K-12 here.)



> "Steam" (dry steam, if you must)  and "water vapor" are preferable to
> the terms "gas" and "water gas"  for water in this state.

Another term I've encountered is "live steam", meaning dry steam or "H2O
gas".


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