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Old cars often have deteriorating interiors(not my Honda) and I got to thinking why. Obviously the sun is a big culprit, the sun will fade dashes, make leather crack, plastic bubble, etc.

Why does this happen? Because all the moisture has been evaporated off the surface, it has essentially been dehydrated.

So, how do we keep things hydrated? With hydration of course, which then begs the question, how much hydration? Too much and your glass gets foggy on the inside and you start getting nasty musky/moldy smells, too little and the interior starts to degrade.

I mean if you put a small dixie cup in a car, and fill it 1/4 way, and leave the car parked in the sun, some of that water will evaporate to steam increasing the humidity in the cabin. Now humidity in the air does have the benefit of limiting radiative heating from the sun, and it also has the benefit of saturating interior parts limiting sun based dehydration. But there's the problem of smell and mustiness that comes from swamp weather.

Old cars often have deteriorating interiors(not my Honda) and I got to thinking why. Obviously the sun is a big culprit, the sun will fade dashes, make leather crack, plastic bubble, etc. Why does this happen? Because all the moisture has been evaporated off the surface, it has essentially been dehydrated. So, how do we keep things hydrated? With hydration of course, which then begs the question, how much hydration? Too much and your glass gets foggy on the inside and you start getting nasty musky/moldy smells, too little and the interior starts to degrade. I mean if you put a small dixie cup in a car, and fill it 1/4 way, and leave the car parked in the sun, some of that water will evaporate to steam increasing the humidity in the cabin. Now humidity in the air does have the benefit of limiting radiative heating from the sun, and it also has the benefit of saturating interior parts limiting sun based dehydration. But there's the problem of smell and mustiness that comes from swamp weather.

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[–] • 0 pt

Steam is a specific kind of vapor that is only produced through boiling. Period, there is no other way to get Steam, unless you know something physics does not.

https://tuttnauer.com/blog/autoclave-sterilization/basic-concepts-of-steam

[–] • 0 pt

This website you linked makes the same stupid point. Steam is water as a gas. Water is already an invisible gas in our atmosphere. Thus there is water in the atmosphere as steam.

[–] • 0 pt

Steam is created by boiling water.

Water below it's boiling point is not steam.

At Sea Level, water boils at 212F.

The temperature at Sea Level typically isn't 212F

Steam doesn't exist below the boiling point of water.

All Steam is Water Vapor, but not all Water Vapor is Steam.

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

The boiling point of water is dependent on pressure, air pressure is not uniform even at sea level which is why evaporation happens in the first place.

I'll give you an example, when air is heated and a large parcel of heated air floats upward due to being less dense than the cooler air surrounding it, it lowers atmospheric pressure lowering the boiling point of water. This can happen at sea level.

Think surface area. The entire Atlantic Ocean is fucking big, you can have an area 100 football fields in length create a pressure drop that boils off a 1 micron thick layer of water you still have a couple gallons of air saturated with steam, ie boiling water.