The “Latent Heat” Fallacy

The Latent Heat Saga

A n outstanding scientific and technological achievement of the twentieth century has been the evolution of nuclear energy which forms part of the mix of energy sources on which the continued growth of our civilization depends. In the twenty-first century we may be blessed with the arrival of another source of energy, of similar magnitude, which is more benign than nuclear energy and does not h...

The “banzhaf Fallacy” Fallacy

The fractional latent heat of crystallizing magmas

The fractional latent heat of a crystallizing system is simply the latent heat of fusion divided by the total enthalpy. When plotted against temperature, this function displays robust pulses with the successive saturation of each incoming crystal phase. Each pulse endures for tens of degrees, corresponding to tens to hundreds of thousands of years in large magma bodies. From an original 1963 de...

Latent heat in the chiral phase transition

A many-particle system in general possesses two or more different forms of existence called phases. Conversions between these phases are called phase transitions. There are mainly two kinds of phase transitions. One is the first-order phase transition, the other is the secondorder one. In the first-order phase transition, as in the conversion from vapor to liquid, the entropy of the system chan...

Latent heat of nuclear matter

We study the latent heat of the liquid-gas phase transition in symmetric nuclear matter using self-consistent mean-field calculations with a few Skyrme forces. The temperature dependence of the latent heat is rather independent of the mean-field parametrization and can be characterized by a few parameters. At low temperatures, the latent heat tends to the saturation energy. Near the critical po...