How does water evaporate from water bodies like ocean and lake when the temperature of water is NOT 100 deg Celsius?
First of all, at the molecular level, whether a substance is in a solid, liquid, or gaseous state does not depend on the “temperature”, but on the energy of the individual molecules. At any given time, regardless of the temperature, there will be some molecules that have enough energy to be gaseous, some with just enough energy to be liquid, and some that have so little energy that they are solid. And individual molecules are constantly changing between these three states due to random collisions and other events that increase or decrease the energy.
Now, when we say that a significant quantity (more than can be quantified by a simple count of molecules) of a substance is “solid”, or “liquid”, or “gaseous”, it is because, at that temperature and pressure, the vast majority of the molecules have an energy level somewhere in the range that determines that state. Obviously, this varies with temperature. But the point is, regardless of temperature, all three states exist simultaneously, though only a small minority of the molecules will exist outside of the majority state.
