# Why does evaporation take place? [duplicate]

This question already has an answer here:

I was looking at at puddle when I thought that this puddle will evaporate tomorrow but then it occurred to me that the boiling temperature of water (aka to turn into gas) is $100$ degrees under 1 atmospheric pressure of earth. Then I thought the temperature around me was 25 degrees which is way away from temperature of boiling therefore it should in theory or at least in my perspective never evaporate the water, yet nature disagrees and does this so.

Therefore I proposed an hypothesis (Still in Middle School so please excuse me) the water turns into gas as a result of the photons "hitting" the atoms and transferring its energy into the water atoms which in turn moves the atoms giving it $KE$ (Kinetic Energy) and this happens over a millions of times which results in water particles gaining this energy and therefore evaporating without substantial notice or feel of it bubbling or showing any sign of it as this happens very slowly.

However I as a middle school student am not too considerate or confident on my hypothesis so would you say my hypothesis is correct or wrong and can you explain why this happens?

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## marked as duplicate by BMS, Brandon Enright, DavePhD, Kyle Kanos, Emilio PisantyJun 24 '14 at 0:52

Side note: 25 degrees is not 1/4 of 100 degrees unless you are using a temperature scale zeroed at absolute 0. You are never allowed to use multiplication or division with temperatures unless they are absolute. – Chris White Jun 23 '14 at 19:10
...and absolute here refers to the kelvin scale. – BMS Jun 23 '14 at 19:16
Possible duplicate of How does water evaporate if it doesn't boil? – BMS Jun 23 '14 at 19:18
@BMS actually, other scales zeroed at absolute zero work as well, e.g. Rankine. – Tim S. Jun 23 '14 at 20:46
Learned something! Thanks. – BMS Jun 23 '14 at 23:08