Evaporation of a small glass of ethylic alcohol is studied both experimentally and through an elementary thermal physics approach. For a cylindrical beaker and no air flow in the room, a simple quadratic relation is found between the evaporation time and the mass of evaporated liquid. This problem and the obtained results offer excellent possibilities for simple student experiments and for testing basic principles of thermal physics. As an example, we use the obtained results for estimating the value of the Boltzmann constant from evaporation experiments. (Contains 1 table and 4 figures.)