characteristic is that a body of water — our
body, or a pot of water, or an ocean — can
absorb a lot of heat without itself quickly
becoming hot. In the kitchen, it means that a
covered pan of water will take more than
twice as long as a pan of oil to heat up to a
given temperature; and conversely, it will
hold that temperature longer after the heat is
removed.
Liquid Water Absorbs a Lot of Heat as It
Vaporizes into Steam Hydrogen bonding also
gives water an unusually high “latent heat of
vaporization,” or the amount of energy that
water absorbs without a rise in temperature as
it changes from a liquid to a gas. This is how
sweating cools us: as the water on the skin of
our over-heated body evaporates, it absorbs
large amounts of energy and carries it away
into the air. Ancient cultures used the same
principle to cool their drinking water and
wine, storing them in porous clay vessels that