Harvest Your Future: Ace the 2025 Agricultural Engineering Exam!

Latent heat is the type of heat that is involved in phase changes without any change in temperature. This means that during processes such as melting, freezing, condensation, and vaporization, energy is absorbed or released by a substance to change its phase while the temperature remains constant.

For example, when ice melts into water at 0°C, energy is required to break the molecular bonds in the solid phase, allowing it to change into the liquid phase. This energy input is the latent heat of fusion, and during this process, although heat energy is being added to the ice, the temperature does not increase until all the ice has melted.

This characteristic of latent heat is crucial in agricultural practices, particularly in understanding plant growth and water management, as it influences evaporation and transpiration processes. Sensible heat, on the other hand, refers to heat that causes a temperature change in a substance, while specific heat is a measure of the energy required to raise the temperature of a unit mass of a substance by one degree Celsius. Thermal heat is a more general term and is not specifically tied to phase changes.