Question

When a person has a severe fever, one therapy used to reduce the fever is an “alcohol rub”. explain how the evaporation of alcohol from a person’s skin removes heat energy from the body.?

Answer 1

alcohol evaporates faster than water or sweat and causes a cooling sensation on the skin as it evaporates. Any liquids do this but since alcohol evaporates faster it's more noticeable.

Or if you want a better answer

Evaporation requires energy to change from liquid to a gas, and that energy comes from whatever the liquid is on, ie; your skin in this case. The energy gets transfered from your skin, in the form of lost heat energy, to the evaporating liquid, resulting in a drop of temperature. Refrigerators use this principle to cool the inside. The faster the evaporation rate, the larger the drop in temperature. Hope this helps.