bodies to study evaporation at larger scales. Penmann [1] came up with an empirical correlation for evaporation rate
in presence of a wind. There have been a few studies (Sharpley & Boelter [2], Boelter et al [3]) when there is no
wind i.e. when evaporation occurs in a natural convection environment measured evaporation from a pan of water in
natural convection environment. Goldstien [4] did some experiments on sublimation of naphthalene in planforms of
different shapes inside a closed chamber. Recently Bowen & Saylor [5] have done experiments on evaporation from
heated water placed in a container. They heated water toa particular temperature and then it was allowed to cool;
cooling causes an unstable temperature gradient and thus convection. In natural systems like lakes and oceans,
evaporation of water can occur due to absorption of sun’s radiation. The IR component of the radiation is absorbed
within a thin layer at the top. In these situations there may not be any convection in the water. In this paper we study
evaporation from small tanks of water under conditions of no-convection (heating from above with an IR heater) and
with natural convection (heating from below or cooling of heated water).