Slopes and plateaus
Heat a beaker of ice steadily and plot temperature against time. The graph is not a ramp — it is a staircase of slopes and plateaus, and each kind of segment has its own machine. On a slope the temperature climbs and answers. On a plateau the thermometer sits still while energy pours in, and the machine is — Q equals m L, where is the heat in joules, is the mass changing phase in grams, and is the specific latent heat in joules per gram: the price of changing one gram's phase, with no temperature change bought at all.
Water carries two of them: melting costs (the subscript f is for fusion, the chemist's word for melting) and boiling costs (v for vaporization). Nearly seven times as much — which is why a pot takes minutes to reach boiling and then a quarter of an hour to boil dry. The named exam wound: reaching for on a plateau. There , so the machine cheerfully reports that melting an iceberg is free. Look at which segment the question lives on BEFORE you pick up a formula.