> Which is... sort of not inaccurate

Really? Do puddles not dry up at night?

My impression was that evaporation occurs because that's just the way liquid behaves. It's more important that water molecules are really small than that they experience sunlight. Temperature-based evaporation is "boiling", and sunlight doesn't make a meaningful difference there, as far as water goes...?

> because that's just the way liquid behaves

That's almost worse than the original! :)

Water evaporates because their energy (heat) causes the molecules to bounce around and sometimes escape the cohesive attraction of their friends and into the air. More energy, more evaporation.

This works well with small water molecules, less well with larger and heavier liquids.

> escape the cohesive attraction of their friends

Hmm, could you call this mysterious "cohesive attraction"

> the bonds which hold water molecules together.

...? If not, then please do describe this cohesive attraction.

I've come to realize some people just like to complain on the internet.

The "bonds which hold water molecules together" are, I think, the covalent bonds holding the Hydrogens to the Oxygen.

Evaporation does not break those bonds, it's just the intact molecules energetically escaping the surface tension of the liquid.

(Disclaimer: My high school chemistry books have not left their shelves in many years, except when moving.)

"Surface tension in water owes to the fact that water molecules attract one another, as each molecule forms a bond with the ones in its vicinity."

Surface tension is a bond that binds water mold together similar to how mortar holds bricks together in a wall.

Mortar doesn't make the brick solid, but it holds the bricks together.

People are reading bond in two different ways. Bond within a molecule vs bond between molecules.

1. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/surface-tension-forms-a-st...

This conversation is a very clear sign that the article is poorly worded. If it takes this much discussion to get at its meaning, it's probably not communicating clearly.

> Temperature-based evaporation is "boiling"

I don't think that's true for naming, but regardless warmer water evaporates quicker.

And the statement doesn't say evaporation doesn't occur for other reasons, though the wording feels like it implies it.

Hair dryers and clothes dryers both operate by adding a bunch of heat to the thing they are trying to dry. I am not a physics expert but that seems to suggest that heat helps speed up evaporation!

The phrase "breaking the bonds which hold water molecules together" can be interpreted two different ways.

1) Breaking the covalent bonds that hold individual water molecules together, preventing them from splitting into two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. That's clearly not true.

2) Breaking the hydrogen bonds that stick one water molecule to another, keeping the water in liquid form. That's true.

In any case, it's poorly phrased.

Is that right? Molecules with no polarity can still form liquids. It happens all the time; we call those liquids "hydrophobic" (or, most commonly, we call them "oils"). The hydrogen bonds aren't what's keeping the water in liquid form.

Cooking oil, notably, will not evaporate the way water will -- if you spill it somewhere, the oil will mostly just stay wherever you left it until you clean it up -- but my understanding was that this is because oil molecules are huge and heavy while water molecules are tiny.

There are a number of forces that allow molecules to form liquids/solids, the hydrogen bond just happens to be the one that acts on water. If my memory serves it's the London force for non-polar molecules.

If the air can hold more water at its temperature it will pick up more water.

It depends on the liquid's vapor pressure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapor_pressure) and temperature relative to the surrounding environment.

I am very skeptical how much usable power could be generated using the 'drinking bird' approach. Show me the engine or generator that the drinking bird powers . . .