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Evaporation & Condensation
Objectives
- To understand the importance of evaporation and condensation in the water cycle.
Resources
Saucepan | Water | Glass bowl | Heat source | Hair dryer | Cotton material (e.g. tea towel)
Today's Lesson
Main Activity
Discuss evaporation with your child. Have they heard this term before?
Talk about puddles on solid ground after the rain. How do these dry up and where does the water go to? Discuss whether the puddles would dry quicker on a hot day, or a cold one. Watch the Evaporating Water Test video.
Optional: You could set this experiment up if you wish and time lapse video it too!
Explain that we cannot see the water in the air as it evaporates, because water vapour is an invisible gas.
Then ask your child to take two pieces of identical fabric, to soak them both in water and to hang them up side by side. Using a hair dryer, ask your child to direct the hot air onto one of the pieces of material until it is noticeably dryer than the other piece. Discuss how the heat from the hair dryer increased the speed of the evaporation process, as well as the fact that the ‘wind’ helped to blow away the humid air from around the fabric. This experiment must be a ‘fair test’. How can it be kept fair? (Same amount of water on each fabric, same size of fabric, identical pieces of fabric to be used).
If you have time, repeat this experiment with some different types of fabric. Use the hair drier each time. What happens? What do you notice?
Resources
WATCH - The Water Cycle (YouTube)