How you can cool a drink using the sun
TO CAMERA: Here’s a way to keep your drinks cool on the beach without using coolers or fridges. So, what you’ve got to do is, soak the towel completely. If you’ve got time you can walk to the sea, but I’m only here for a couple of days. Right, with the towel wet, you wrap that around your drink. Like so. Lie it on the sand, and let the weather do the work.
NARRATION: As the sun beats down on the towel some of the water heats up enough that it turns into water vapour. As it evaporates it takes that heat with it leaving any less-hot water molecules behind. So, the towel gets progressively colder, cooling down my drink.
TO CAMERA: OK, I think it should have worked by now. And you know what? It worked! That could be a life-saver in certain circumstances.
Download/print a transcript of the video
Richard Hammond uses a beach, a towel, water and a drink to demonstrate how evaporation can be used to cool liquid.
He provides a simple explanation of the concept of heat exchange.
Teacher Notes
This short film demonstrates how evaporation works. This experiment could be repeated during on-site fieldwork or within a classroom environment.
Curriculum Notes
This topic appears in geography and physics at KS3 and KS4 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and National 5 in Scotland. At GCSE it appears in AQA, OCR A, EDEXCEL, EDUQAS, WJEC and CCEA, in SQA at National 5.
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