If you remove the water from the boiler for a while, you do get really hot
metal and that does make for a very high pressure as the heat from the metal
is transfered to the water. THIS DOES LEAD TO OVERPRESSURES AND BOILER
RUPTURES! It however isn't what you guys have been discussing tho. IN the
overtemped boiler from a lack of water (note that the boiler won't get that
hot if the water was there!) you put the water in, the temporary condition
(remember that the temp of the metal is a lot more than what is normal for
the boiler's metal when it is wet with a layer of water) is that the boiler
has a lot more capacity to heat the water than it normally has and thus the
boiler pressure starts climbing into the region where the boiler can't hold
the pressure and then you usually have a big boom! This isn't because the
water suddenly decides to expand into steam due to a pressure drop or any
other thing but what is exactly normal for the whole process of boiling
water in a boiler.
I'll also note that the cooler water elsewhere in the boiler will be doing
as best possible to readsorb the steam but will fail as there will be too
much of it to do immediately due to the lack of ability to transfer the
latent heat elsewhere in the water. Things are thus unstable only in the
ability to transfer the heat moved from one point to another.
Maxwell's demons don't really suddenly move all of the atoms of air into one
small part of the room and they don't move all of the heat into one small
part of the water in a boiler either. Trying to make them do so is merely
an exercise in frustration, whether you try to do it as an exercisce in your
mind or in reality so don't bother to try to do so. It just shows how
little you know and how much you wish reality to conform to what your
wishes for it to be.
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Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?
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