What state of matter is water vapor?

What state of matter is water vapor?

It's a gas.

Gas

Who noess

Gas

But how can water vapour be gas when there is the word "water"??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sohjwd

but how can water vapour be gas when there is the word "water" ???

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Because "water" literally refers to the chemical H2O. It could refer to water in the solid phase (what we usually call "ice" in regular English), liquid phase (what we usually just refer to as "water" in everyday English, which is why it's confusing), or the gas phase (usually called "steam" or "water vapor").

By the way, just to point out another way common English can confuse the issue, true steam (i.e. water in the gas phase) is invisible! When you see "steam" (in the everyday English sense of the word) rising from a hot cup of tea, you're actually seeing small droplets of liquid water that have formed in the air. The steam, itself, is invisible; but as it cools, it condenses back into the liquid phase in the form of tiny droplets which appear as the "clouds" emanating from the tea cup.