It's still summer until September 22 - boo to all those rushing out the pumpkin decorations!!! While enjoying the season with a nice glass of ice tea, this activity explains how liquids turn to gas and gas turns into a liquid.
Materials: Cotton balls and rubbing alcohol
Process: Dip the cotton balls in rubbing alcohol. Rub the soaked cotton balls over the back of your hand. Blow across you hand. What happens?
Result: You hand felt cold. Rubbing alcohol evaporated from your skin due to the heat from your skin. As it evaporates it draws heat from your body and thus your skin feels cooler. thus the liquid alcohol turned into a gas. In the past, hospitals rubbed fever patients with alcohol to help cool them down and thus resulted in the product, rubbing alcohol.
Materials: Ice tea glass, ice, warm tea.
Process: Place warm tea into 1/3rd of the glass. Add ice until the glass is full.
Result: Water will appear on the outside of the glass. This happens because when you added the ice, the cold glass absorbed heat from the air. The chilled air next to the glass can not hold much water vapor, which is a gas, thus turns the vapor into liquid which appears as drips down the side of the glass.