Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,

I need your help. My project is about evaporation. So I have to make some expreriments to see what effect the evaporation. I decide to find "if the liquid affects the evaporation" and " if the surface of the container affects how quickly the liquid evaporate." But I don't know how to make my experiment to be valid and reliable. How can I provoke the evaporation?? Can you help me please??

Sounds like a good topic to investigate!

You could test the evaporation rate of different liquids under the same conditions (temperature, container type/size, and ambient conditions) and also test the same liquid under in different containers. Be sure to keep the starting volume and temperature of your liquid the same and make sure your ambient conditions are the same for each experiment (room temperature, humidity, etc).

Depending on how much time you have you could observe evaporation at room temperature which would take at least a few days or you could speed it up by increasing the temperature of your experiment. Maybe you could measure evaporation of liquids in a warm oven over several hours.

If you use an oven be sure to use liquids and containers that are safe when warm and safe to have in your oven. Be careful moving hot liquids around during the experiment - use oven mitts.

As a hint - you can measure the amount evaporated during the expermine by measureing the volume of the liquid at the start and finish OR you could weigh the liquid at the start and finish.

Thank you very much for your answer.