Evaporation of Water

These downloadable videos and animations are part of the multimedia package Stuff and Substance, developed by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). They can be used to distinguish between boiling and evaporation of water below boiling point.

Boiling forms a pure sample of water in the gas state (the big bubbles), evaporation below boiling point forms a mixture of water and air. Students find it difficult to understand how water particles can separate from each other at temperatures below boiling point.

These resources can be used to establish the phenomenon of evaporation below boiling point. The idea of energy distribution amongst particles at a particular temperature can be used to explain the difference between evaporation below boiling point and boiling. Different rates of evaporation for different substances are addressed.

These video and animation files form part of the resources in the in the Stuff and Substance multimedia package, which provides a series of interactive pages that can be used by teachers or students in the classroom.

Please note: From 2021, Adobe has discontinued support for Flash player and as a result some interactive files may no longer be playable. As an alternative method to accessing these files a group of volunteers passionate about the preservation of internet history have created project Ruffle (https://ruffle.rs/). Ruffle is an entirely open source project that you can download and run many interactive Flash resources. For further information regarding STEM Learning’s policy for website content, please visit our terms and conditions page.