There is a term upon the tip of my tongue and I can not yet taste it. I need your help to find it.
I would simply stick my tongue out and allow you to read it off the tip, except that one of these newbies would probably sit immediately upon my tongue and rotate or gyrate or something while you were trying to read it.
It is the word we use (well, obviously not we "less capable," but YOU chemistry interested well-studied types, mostly) to describe what happens when solidly frozen water/ice turns into pure water vapor without making the transition to liquid first.
I saw a huge cloud of fog from this effect in the setting sun, around four PM, creating a vortex of rising vapor directly transformed from a field of pure ice, and taking on the colors of the setting sun ...
... anyway, I was speechless, because the word escaped me and my artistic speech had to take over and satisfy those I was with in company, just before I sat down to try to interact with the forum, actually.
Enough of the time line.
My simple question is:
can you tell me the name of that simple word i should have used?.
