Eva's tutorial on evaporation

Hi, if you liked my first tutorial, I guarantee that you will find this lesson on the arguably most important part of the hydrologic cycle helpful! I am here to teach all of you about evaporation.

Evaporation is the vaporization of a liquid that occurs on the surface of water. It is transferred from the ground or a water mass to the atmospheric gasses, where it will then be condensed and eventually precipitate back to the ground, where the cycle will continue on for as long as we can predict. The sun serves as thermal energy for the water, causing it to evaporate. The water gets heated, causing the molecules to move faster until they rise from the surface of the water source. Energy breaks the bonds that hold water molecules together, which is why water easily evaporates at the boiling point but evaporaties much more slowly at the freezing point. 90% of moisture in the atmosphere via evaporation comes from oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. (the other 10% is from plant transpiration)

Three factors affect the rate of evaporation:
1. wind speed: the higher the wind speed, the more evaporation
2. temperature: the higher the temperature, the more evaporation
3. humidity: the lower the humidity, the more evaporation

Evaporation also helps us when we need to separate something from water. We do not need a distillation apparatus like we have seen in class in order to separate water from another substance. It can be done ourselves. For example, if you are stuck on an island and need salt, you can put the ocean water in a bowl in the sun and wait for the sun to evaporate the water. The salt can not evaporate because they have different boiling points, and you will be left with usable salt.