Evaporation of Water from a Wet T-Shirt

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This Demonstration shows how the rate of evaporation of water from a flat surface changes with temperature, wind speed, drying time, solar irradiance, air pressure and relative humidity. Selecting a location determines the last three variables, while the first three are controlled with sliders. The changing level of water in the beaker serves as a proxy for the amount of water that would evaporate from a hanging shirt under such conditions. The moving water molecules on the T-shirt serve as a visual representation of the process of evaporation as they turn into water vapor above the shirt and eventually dissipate into the atmosphere.
Contributed by: Hannah Castillo and Sophia Damman (April 2017)
Additional contributions by: Eitan Geva (University of Michigan)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Details
This Demonstration is based on the Shuttleworth equation for evaporation [1].
Reference
[1] W. J. Shuttleworth, “Putting the ‘Vap’ in Evaporation,” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 11(1), 2007 pp. 210–244. doi:10.5194/hess-11-210-2007.
Submission from the Compute-to-Learn course at the University of Michigan.
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