• Question: why do puddles evaporate when they are not over 100'c

    Asked by to Emily on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Great question David246!

      It is surprising that puddles evaporate when its cold isnt it! As well as temperature having an impace the ‘vapour pressure’ also plays a role in evaporation. This means that puddles eveporate as the air around them contains less water than the puddle therefore the water slowly moves from the puddle where its in a high concentration of water to the air where there is a low concentration in the same way as when you add sugar to tea or coffee it dissolves and spreads evenly so the concentration is even, or if you put 2 solutions next to eachother, one with water + salt and one with just water, the salt will move my a process called diffusion. Does this help? Just comment if you’d like a more fetailed explanation 🙂

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