During a recent SEED workshop in Malaysia we visited a traditional Malay house that had been restored and placed on the grounds of the Heritage Centre in Kuala Lumpur.

Traditional Malay house with clay tile roof.

It had been built in sections during the 1920s and 1930s. Without air-conditioning or even electricity for fans, it was a challenge to keep the house cool. The clay tile roof helped. Here’s how:

When it rains, the clay absorbs water.  Then, the water evaporates, cooling the roof and the air under it. This is called “evaporative cooling.” At a subsequent workshop we decided to do an experiment to see if this really works.

	Digging Deeper
	Find out more about
why evaporation causes cooling…

Our Experiment

Tools and Materials

We found some roof tiles, but they turned out to be concrete, not clay.  We decided to test them anyway.  We also found a broken clay flower pot. Our materials were:

2 concrete roof tiles 2 pieces of clay flower pot 4 thermometers
What To Do We soaked one concrete tile and one clay piece in water for about 10 minutes
Then we put all four pieces on the ground in the sun with a thermometer under each one.  The thermometers all registered 36° C at this point.
We assigned one person to each of the four pieces. A fifth person kept track of the time.  At the end of one minute, we lifted the tiles for a moment, read the temperatures and put the tiles down again.  We did this at one-minute intervals for six minutes.

Try this for yourself. All you need is the materials we listed above.

What did we find?  Take a look at our results.  What were your results?

…more Science Lab projects about…
Air & Space
Earth Science
Electricity & Magnetism
Properties of Liquids

…try some interactive experiments in our…
Virtual Lab

…or test your skills at our…
Math Puzzle of the Month
Engineering Challenge