Imagine you have a pot of cold water (ice cubes). You put the pot on the stove to heat it up. Here’s what happens:
- At first, the temperature stays the same even though you’re adding heat. Why? Because that heat isn’t making the water itself hotter. Instead, it’s breaking the ice cubes apart, turning them into liquid water.
- Once all the ice is melted, then the heat you add will actually start to increase the water’s temperature.
This “hidden” heat that goes towards changing state, not temperature, is called latent heat. It’s like the water is using that heat to overcome the forces holding the ice cubes together, not to get itself more excited (hotter).