Distillation

Distillation is a science trick to clean or separate liquids. You heat a liquid until it turns into gas. Then you cool the gas back into a liquid. What you collect is cleaner than what you started with. People have used this method for thousands of years.

How It Works

Imagine you have salty water and you want fresh water. You boil the salty water, and the water turns into steam. The salt stays behind because it cannot become a gas. You then cool the steam, and it becomes pure water. Scientists call this process distillation.

Where We Use It

Distillation has many uses. It helps make drinking water from seawater in dry places. It is used to make perfumes from flowers. Oil refineries use it to separate fuel from crude oil. Even some bottled waters are made with distillation.

Fun Facts

• Distilled water has no minerals in it.
• The ancient Greeks and Egyptians used early forms of distillation.
• A tool used for distillation is called a still.

Did You Know?

Astronauts on the space station use distillation to turn their sweat and even their pee into clean drinking water.