What Is Sublimation?

I didn’t even know to ask, What Is Sublimation? until I stumbled on this passage and discovered the definition.

Sublimation is when a solid directly becomes a gas, without ever becoming a liquid.

Honestly, I am not even sure I realized this was possible.

After reading about it there is a whole matrix of these transitions.

• Melting – Solid becoming a liquid
• Sublimation – Solid becoming a gas
• Freezing – Liquid becoming a solid
• Vaporization – Liquid becoming a gas
• Deposition – Gas becoming a solid
• Condensation – Gas becoming a liquid

How cool.

And I didn’t even get into the state of plasma that includes recombination and ionization.

Ok, fine. But quickly:

• Recombination – Plasma becoming a gas
• Ionization – Gas becoming a plasma

Of course I never took a lot of traditional science classes in college.

It was all economics for me.

In a dry wind like this, snow and ice can pass directly into the air as a gas without having first melted to water. This process is called sublimation; tonight the snow in the yard and the ice in the creek sublime.

-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek