Why is steam burn potentially more severe than a water burn?
Answer:
This is because liquid water can only reach 212 degrees F, while gas H2O (steam) can get much much hotter.
If the water is hot enough to hurt you, it should be almost hot enough to boil and turn into vapor. Because the water is hot, it heats the surrounding air. Heated air holds more water than cooler air. So, the hot water evaporates into the air.
With steam, the water is already evaporated into the air and can't really go anywhere once it touches your skin.
Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade, however, the steam that is generated by the boiling water is actually at a slightly higher temperature. Putting it very simply, this is the reason why a steam burn is more severe than a boiling water burn.
Hope this helps.
Because the steam has more energy in it. It takes much energy to turn hot water into steam, so when you get burned by steam it is releasing this extra energy to you causing a much more severe burn.
You actually get a burn because when you pour hot water (or steam) on yourself, the water (or steam) transfer its energy into your skin to cool down. Steam obviously comes from water and in order to vaporize water a massive amount of energy is input. So when steam touches your skin, it inputs this massive amount of energy (heat of vaporzation/condensation) into your body. With liquid water, since it's vaporized, there is no heat of vaporization to worry about.
steam release more heat to turn into liquid form and cool down.
BECAUSE STEAM IS HOTTER THAN WATER
Water will only ever get as hot as its boiling point. At that point it undergoes a phase change into steam. Steam being heated water vapor. You can add more heat to the water vapor in its steam phase, so it can be hotter than 100 degrees Celsius. Therefor, it can cause more severe injury.
For all those "but wait a minute" people: okay, okay, if you increase the pressure of the system the water is in you can increase its temperature higher than 100 degrees C without it turning into steam, such as in your car's radiator. But even then only up to a point. Steam can always be made hotter than water can ever be heated to in any system.
Steam can be nearly invisible. "Live steam" is completely invisible, and it can be as hot as 2,000 degrees (depending on its pressure). Men in ships such as battleships, nuclear subs and aircraft carriers must deal with live steam that's over 1,000 degrees. Should any naval engineer be near a steam pipe that suddenly releases live steam, that naval engineer can be in extreme danger. A pipe that bursts and releases an enormous amount of high pressure live steam will instantly kill anyone nearby...with terrible damage to their body...unmentionable, I might say.
Remember, steam is water vapor, so it's behavior is water-like. If you breathed in 900 degree air, )DON'T TRY - IT CAN BE FATAL) you'd instantly damage your lungs...and that's just plain 'ole AIR - albeit superheated.
Anything superheated is terribly dangerous!
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