Dry ice evaporating

    Caption: "Small pellets of carbon dioxide ice (CO_2 ice AKA dry ice) sublimating (evaporating in loose astro-jargon) in air. The pellets are ∼ 0.5--1.0 cm in size scale." (Slightly edited.)

    Features:

    1. Carbon dioxide (CO_2) is an everyday life example of a substance without a liquid phase at ordinary pressures (see Wikepdia: standard ambient temperature and pressure (SATP or STP, T=298.15 K=25 C, P=100 kPa=14.504 psi)).

    2. In the image, you can just barely descry the CO_2 gas fuming away.

    3. Under ordinary Earth surface air pressure, the liquid phase does NOT exist in thermodynamic equilibrium for CO_2.

      CO_2 changes from solid to gas directly by sublimation---the reverse process is deposition.

    4. In astro-jargon, we loosely use vaporization (or when appropriate evaporation) for sublimation and condensation for deposition.

    5. CO_2 ice is called dry ice because, of course, it isn't wet.

    6. The sublimation temperature of dry ice (i.e., the temperature below which it would NOT sublimate) is -78.5°C (194.65 K) under ordinary Earth surface air pressure.

    Credit/Permission: © Richard Wheeler (AKA User:Zephyris) 2007 (uploaded to Wikipedia by Matt Flaschen (AKA User:Superm401), 2008) / Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.
    Image link: Wikipedia: File:Dry Ice Pellets Subliming.jpg.
    Local file: local link: co2_ice.html.
    File: Thermodynamics file: co2_ice.html.