San Antonio College Library

The temperature at which a solid changes to a liquid. For pure substances, the melting or fusion process occurs at a single temperature (see table), the temperature rise with addition of heat being arrested until melting is complete. The direct transition from solid phase to gas phase is not properly called melting, but preferably, sublimation.

"What is temperature, and how can we measure it correctly? These may seem like simple questions, but the most renowned scientists struggled with them throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Inventing Temperature, Chang examines how scientists first created thermometers; how they measured temperature beyond the reach of standard thermometers; and how they managed to assess the reliability and accuracy of these instruments without a circular...