Sunday, March 30, 2014

Evaporate Faster

I do the dishes here at home. My wife cooks, and since I do not cook, I contribute by doing the dishes when I can. For the most part this involves putting dishes into the dishwasher, but there is always one or two items that I wash by hand in the sink. Some of these non-dishwasher safe items are plastic containers.

One of my hangups with plastic containers is with their curved edges designed to hold a tight seal for a cover. Drying these becomes a very detailed chore for me. I like to put dishes away completely dry, and to get at all the moisture on a plastic container involves stuffing the folded edge of a towel into the crevices of the plastic containers. Because of the required attention to detail, I tend not to take this step, opting instead to let the containers dry on the counter. But I'm mindful of the moisture, so I take these containers and whip then in the air, forcing the water off the surfaces. I am rewarded with a splatter on the sink from this action, and I leave the chore thinking that this causes the remaining water to evaporate faster.

As I was composing this post in my head, I realized that I couldn't definitively declare that my actions make the plastic containers dry faster. Does a puddle of water evaporate faster than that same volume of water dispersed over discrete droplets? In other words: does a teaspoon of water dry slower than say that same teaspoon divided into two?

This ends up being a fruitless experiment, because my action removes excess water. The amount of water remaining should evaporate faster than the original, larger amount.

Or maybe I shouldn't think about this too much.