What’s the difference between water boiling and it evaporating normally? Don’t both end up the same, ie. water turning into gas form?

395 views

What’s the difference between water boiling and it evaporating normally? Don’t both end up the same, ie. water turning into gas form?

In: 2

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Air is able to hold a little bit of water vapor at room temperature (think of humidity). If you have an open container of liquid water, as long as the nearby air isn’t totally saturated with water vapor, water will very gradually evaporate from the container and go into the air. Think about dipping the edge of a paper towel into water; it will suck up a small amount of the water until it can’t hold any more. If you had a lot of water in an airtight room, eventually you would not get any more evaporation because the air is already holding all the water it can. But usually due to wind, air conditioning, etc., the water gets continually exposed to new, drier air, so it can keep evaporating until it’s all gone.

Heating up water to the point where it boils means that *all* the water wants to become vapor *right now* and is willing to shove the air out of the way to do so. Instead of the previous analogy of dipping a paper towel into the water to soak a little bit up, this is like sticking a vacuum hose into the water and pulling it all out of the container really fast.

You are viewing 1 out of 9 answers, click here to view all answers.