Help with Evaporation Rates for school project

[JoshHarpst]

Hello everyone, my name is Josh Harpst (if you couldn't figure that out) and am in my 6th semester at slippery rock university. I am a Mathematic's major and just got an invitation into KME (Kappa Mu Epsilon) the national honoray Mathematics fraternity. To get inducted you must do a research project and i thought, hmm, with all the time i don't have what can i do? So i decided that i wanted to have it deal with something i am passionate about and that just so happens to be Saltwater Aquariums. Well the project has to deal with math so i decided i wanted to do research on Evaporation rates due to temperature in the saltwater aquarium. This will involve differential equations and such so it's mathematical. So what i need your help with is some information. Any sites or anything that deal with evaporation. The mission of this research is to model an equation that can help predict the mean rate of evap due to temperatue so that way aquarists can calculate the amount of water they need to drip into the system while the water is evaporating to keep salinity stable. Any help or motivation would be greatly appreciated. I have just started this reseach today and the project needs to be completed by April 10 to be inducted. So thanks in advance and hopefully i'll get this thing running. Thanks everyone.


~Josh Harpst

 

[uscgbeachbum]

College must've changed in the last year...frat initiations usually involved a goat, llama, or other odd animal and lots of alcohol. But...I know an easy, but not cheap, way to do it. Set up an auto top off setup using 2 float VALVES (not switches) using a resevoir always making sure the water level is constant. If you have a controller to ensure temp stays the same...just set it to a value one day and increase it daily. Watch how much water is decreased in the resevior over a given period of time (24 hours). Voila!

 

[Fred_J]

Your problem is that you will have to find out how much the tank temperature changes on a tank during the day. It will also depend on whether it is an open top aquarium or not. I'm about to replace my glass with egg crate to lower the temperature during the day but also keep the fish from carpet surfing. Evaporation rate will also vary by the exposed surface area. A 90 gallon and a 75 gallon tank have the same water surface area.

I think you're going to have to do something to narrow the variables. There are just too many as it stands.
Just my $.015
Fred

 

[reefwick]

I think how dry the room is will matter too. I get more evaporation during the dry winter months than I do in the humid summer months.

 

[DJ88©]

[moved]

 

[Chef]

good luck it will be intresting to see what you come up with.