Like if I spill water and it’s dry when I come back in a couple hours how did it do that without getting up to its boiling temp?
Is it the same type of thing like when my hair is wet and it’s in the process of drying? Because it isn’t at the 212° F or I’d feel it, right?
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Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles in a substance. The boiling point is when the average particle has enough kinetic energy to break free of the intermolecular forces that hold it in the liquid. Because an average is being taken, temperatures below the boiling point can still allow the particles at the energetic end of the bell curve to escape.
When a puddle of water is left in the sun, the entire puddle will not reach boiling point, but the particles on the surface will absorb more heat than the average particle in the puddle and evaporate. Then the next layer of particles become the surface and this repeats until the puddle evaporates completely without ever raising the average energy to the boiling point.
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