There's this question that has been bugging me most of my life: how is it that wet clothes left hanging to dry, get actually dry? If I get it right, the clothes are a mesh of fibers (we could assume synthetic fibers to make it simpler) that capture droplets of water in the mesh. When one hangs the cloth gravity makes some of the droplets fall from the mesh; still if there's a side that's exposed to a heat source it dries faster, so in addition to gravity there's also heat. However, the heat does not boil the droplets.
So... - what is actually going on there ? - could the drying be optimized, e.g. maximizing surfaces exposed, etc ?