how come spilled water inside and outside evaporates so quickly despite water’s evaporation point bring 100°, no where near the ambient temperature in home or outside?

Question

how come spilled water inside and outside evaporates so quickly despite water’s evaporation point bring 100°, no where near the ambient temperature in home or outside?

In: 365

Answer 1

They way I have heard it is:

Water molecules when liquid are always ‘wiggling’ around.

At 0 degrees, or ice, or molecules are wiggling around at all, so it stays solid and no molecules escape.

At 100 degrees, or boiling, all or nearly all the molecules are wiggling around and can escape into steam or vapour (they are different, steam is invisible).

In between 0 and 100 degrees the amount of wiggling is different depending how close to either temperature it is, but some are always wiggling with enough energy to escape or evaporate away.

That’s why at 30 degrees outside things evaporate and at 40 degrees they evaporate faster and so on.