Why does evaporation cause cooling?

Understanding the energy transfers at play makes it clear why evaporation causes cooling and helps you see why the process is exploited a lot in nature. read more

Evaporation is the process in which the molecules of liquid which are on the surface are swept away by the air. Now, as we know that molecules of liquid remain in constant random motion which is called brownian motion therefore they posses some kinetic energy. read more

Evaporation is one of the four principal ways that heat can be transferred (the other three are radiation, convection, and conduction). Evaporation of sweat from the skin is an endothermic reaction: the reaction essentially"consumes" heat, which cools the body in the process. read more

Evaporation causes cooling when the"heat of evaporation" is positive. This is defined as the heat taken up by the phase transition from liquid to vapor. For water, the heat of evaporation is unusually large, so it take away so much heat, the surface it evaporates from is significantly cooled. read more

Evaporation causes cooling because the process requires heat energy. The energy is taken away by the molecules when they convert from liquid into gas, and this causes cooling on the original surface. read more