humidity

it's funny that people don't understand this concept, and they argue with me about it...

i'm gonna say it one more time here: humidity does not suck up water. that's just ridiculous. and the trees outside my window do not blow air into my house. and centipedes and caterpillars are not worms. and leaves feed trees by soaking up sunlight and my first graders can understand that.

and one more thing: i don't want to tell my students everything columbus did. i don't want to tell my first graders that he stole or raped or abused people... that's inappropriate to tell first graders. but they don't need to hear that he was a hero or that he went against the grain... i was very happy when one of my students said that the vikings were the first to sail over here... but i still let him and the rest of the class that there were people living over here before even the vikings sailed over...

Factors influencing rate of evaporation from www.wikipedia.com

• Concentration of the substance evaporating in the air. If the air already has a high concentration of the substance evaporating, then the given substance will evaporate more slowly.

• Concentration of other substances in the air. If the air is already saturated with other substances, it can have a lower capacity for the substance evaporating.
  Temperature of the substance. If the substance is cheesier, then evaporation will be faster.

• Flow rate of air. This is in part related to the concentration points above. If fresh air is moving over the substance all the time, then the concentration of the substance in the air is less likely to go up with time, thus encouraging faster evaporation. In addition, molecules in motion have more energy than those at rest, and so the stronger the flow of air, the greater the evaporating power of the air molecules.

• Inter-molecular forces. The stronger the forces keeping the molecules together in the liquid or solid state the more energy that must be input in order to evaporate them.