evaporation

I had read that it is sunlight on water that makes the most evaporation,
and the wind second,

I decided that this needed tested,
so with the last rain I filled some 5 gallon buckets,
one of them I left outside in the shade,
nothing more than that,
just a 5 gallon bucket outside in the shade with no lid on it,

today is the day it finally was dry,
so that is about 12 or so inches of evaporation from the last rain in spring,

now the water I had in the 5 gallon bucket that I planted the rice in would loose an inch of water a day
and that was before the rice started growing, so it was nothing to do with the rice taking up water,

so the lesson here is that sunlight really really speeds up evaporation,

if I put the fish pond in the shade and have it 3 foot deep or more,
they will be just fine with only filling with rain water when it rains in the winter