Section 3. _the Sea of Compressed Air in Which We Live: Air Pressure._

Does a balloon explode if it goes high in the air?

What is suction?

Why does soda water run up a straw when you draw on the straw?

Why will evaporated milk not flow freely out of a can in which there is only one hole?

Why does water gurgle when you pour it out of a bottle?

We are living in a sea of compressed air. Every square inch of our bodies has about 15 pounds of pressure against it. The only reason we are not crushed is that there is as strong pressure inside of our bodies pushing out as there is outside pushing in. There is compressed air in the blood and all through the body. If you were to lie down on the ground and have all the air pumped out from under you, the air above would crush you as flat as a pancake. You might as well let a dozen big farm horses trample on you, or let a huge elephant roll over you, as let the air press down on you if there were no air underneath and inside your body to resist the pressure from above. It is hard to believe that the air and liquids in our bodies are pressing out with a force great enough to resist this crushing weight of air. But if you were suddenly to go up above the earth's atmosphere, or if you were to stay down here and go into a room from which the air were to be pumped all at once, your body would explode like a torpedo.

When you suck the air out of a bottle, the surrounding air pressure forces the bottle against your tongue; if the bottle is a small one, it will stick there. And the pressure of the air and blood in your tongue will force your tongue down into the neck of the bottle from which part of the air has been taken.

In the same way, when you force the air out of a rubber suction cap, such as is used to fasten reading lamps to the head of a bed, the air pressure outside holds the suction cap tightly to the object against which you first pressed it, making it stick there.

We can easily experiment with air pressure because we can get almost entirely rid of it in places and can then watch what happens. A place from which the air is practically all pumped out is called a vacuum. Here are some interesting experiments that will show what air pressure does:

EXPERIMENT 2. Hold a burned-out electric lamp in a basin of water, break its point off, and see what happens.

All the common electric lamps (less than 70 watts) are made with vacuums inside. The reason for this is that the fine wire would burn up if there were any air in the lamps. When you knock the point off the globe, it leaves a space into which the water can be pushed. Since the air is pressing hard on the surface of the water except in the one place where the vacuum in the lamp globe is, the water is forced violently into this empty space.

It really is a good deal like the way mud comes up between your toes when you are barefoot. Your foot is pressing on the mud all around except in the spaces between your toes, and so the mud is forced up into these spaces. The air pressure on the water is like your foot on the mud, and the space in the lamp globe is like the space between your toes. Since wherever there is air it is pressing hard, the only space into which it can force water or anything else is into a place from which all the air has been removed, like the inside of the lamp globe.

The reason that the water does not run out of the globe is this: the hole is too small to let the air squeeze up past the water, and therefore no air can take the place of the water that might otherwise run out. In order to flow out, then, the water would have to leave an empty space or vacuum behind it, and the air pressure would not allow this.

WHY WATER GURGLES WHEN IT POURS OUT OF A BOTTLE. You have often noticed that when you pour water out of a bottle it gurgles and gulps instead of flowing out evenly. The reason for this is that when a little water gets out and leaves an empty space behind, the air pushing against the water starts to force it back up; but since the mouth of the bottle is fairly wide, the air itself squeezes past the water and bubbles up to the top.

EXPERIMENT 3. Put a straw or a piece of glass tube down into a glass of water. Hold your finger tightly over the upper end, and lift the tube out of the water. Notice how the water stays in the tube. Now remove your finger from the upper end.

The air holds the water up in the tube because there is no room for it to bubble up into the tube to take the place of the water; and the water, to flow out of the tube, would have to leave a vacuum, which the air outside does not allow. But when you take your finger off the top of the straw or tube, the air from above takes the place of the water as rapidly as it flows out; so there is no tendency to form a vacuum, and the water leaves the tube. Now do you see why you make two holes in the top of a can of evaporated milk when you wish to pour the milk out evenly?

EXPERIMENT 4. Push a rubber suction cap firmly against the inside of the bell jar of an air pump. Try to pull the suction cap off. If it comes off, press it on again; place the bell jar on the plate of the air pump, and pump the air out of the jar. What must have been holding the suction cap against the inside of the jar? Does air press up and sidewise as well as down? Test this further in the following experiment:

EXPERIMENT 5. Put a cork into an empty bottle. Do not use a new cork, but one that has been fitted into the bottle many times and has become shaped to the neck. Press the cork in rather firmly, so that it is air-tight, but do not jam it in. Set the bottle on the plate of the air pump, put the bell jar over it, and pump the air out of the jar. What makes the cork fly out of the bottle? What was really in the "empty" bottle? Why could it not push the cork out until you had pumped the air out of the jar?

EXPERIMENT 6. Wax the rims of the two Magdeburg hemispheres (see Fig. 7). Screw the lower section into the hole in the plate of the air pump. Be sure that the stop valve in the neck of the hemisphere is open. (The little handle should be vertical.) Fit the other section on to the first, and pump out as much air as you can. Close the stop valve. Unscrew the hemispheres from the air pump. Try to pull them apart--pull straight out, taking care not to slide the parts. If you wish, let some one else take one handle, and see if the two of you can pull it apart.

Before you pumped the air out of the hemisphere, the compressed air inside of them (you remember all the air down here is compressed) was pushing them apart just as hard as the air outside of them was pushing them together. When you pumped the air out, however, there was hardly any air left inside of them to push outward. So the strong pressure of the outside air against the hemispheres had nothing to oppose it. It therefore pressed them very tightly together and held them that way.

This experiment was first tried by a man living in Magdeburg, Germany. The first set of hemispheres he used proved too weak, and when the air in them was partly pumped out, the pressure of the outside air crushed them like an egg shell. The second set was over a foot in diameter and much stronger. After he had pumped the air out, it took sixteen horses, eight pulling one way and eight the opposite way, to pull the hemispheres apart.

EXPERIMENT 7. Fill a bottle (or flask) half full of water. Through a one-hole stopper that will fit the bottle, put a bent piece of glass tubing that will reach down to the bottom of the bottle. Set the bottle, thus stoppered, on the plate of the air pump, with a beaker or tumbler under the outer end of the glass tube. Put the bell jar over the bottle and glass, and pump the air out of the jar. What is it that forces the water up and out of the bottle? Why could it do this when the air was pumped out of the bell jar and not before?

HOW A SELTZER SIPHON WORKS. A seltzer siphon works on the same principle. But instead of the ordinary compressed air that is all around us, there is in the seltzer siphon a gas (carbon dioxid) which has been much more compressed than ordinary air. This strongly compressed gas forces the seltzer water out into the less compressed air, exactly as the compressed air in the upper part of the bottle forced the water out into the comparative vacuum of the bell jar in Experiment 7.

EXPERIMENT 8. Fill a toy balloon partly full of air by blowing into it, and close the neck with a rubber band so that no air can escape. Lay a saucer over the hole in the plate of the air pump, so that the rubber of the balloon cannot be sucked down the hole. Lay the balloon on top of this saucer, put the bell jar over it, and pump the air out of the jar. What makes the balloon expand? What is in it? Why could it not expand before you pumped the air out from around it?

A toy balloon expands for the same reason when it goes high in the air. Up there the air pressure is not so strong outside the balloon, and so the gas inside makes the balloon expand until it bursts.

EXPERIMENT 9. Lay a rubber tube flat in the bottom of a pan of water, so that the tube will be filled with water. Let one end stay under water, but pinch the other end tightly shut with your thumb and finger and lift it out of the pan. Lower this closed end into a sink or empty pan that is lower than the pan of water. Now stop pinching the tube shut. This device is called a siphon (Fig. 8).

EXPERIMENT 10. Put the mouth of a small syringe, or better, of a glass model lift pump, under water. Draw the handle up. Does the water follow the plunger up, stand still, or go down in the pump?

When you pull up the plunger, you leave an empty space; you shove the air out of the pump or syringe ahead of the plunger. The air outside, pressing on the water, forces it up into this empty space from which the air has been pushed. But air pressure cannot force water up even into a perfect vacuum farther than about 33 feet. If your glass pump were, say, 40 feet long, the water would follow the plunger up for a little over 30 feet, but nothing could suck it higher; for by the time it reaches that height it is pushing down with its own weight as hard as the air is pressing on the water below. No suction pump, or siphon, however perfect, will ever lift water more than about 33 feet, and it will do well if it draws water up 28 or 30 feet. This is because a perfect vacuum cannot be made. There is always some water vapor formed by the water evaporating a little, and there is always a small amount of air that has been dissolved in water, both of which partly fill the space above the water and press down a little on the water within the pump.

If you had a straw over 33 feet long, and if some one held a glass of lemonade for you down near the sidewalk while you leaned over from the roof of a three-story building with your long straw, you could not possibly drink the lemonade. The air pressure would not be great enough to lift it so high, no matter how hard you sucked,--that is, no matter how perfect a vacuum you made in the upper part of the straw. The lemonade would rise part way, and then your straw would be flattened by the pressure outside.

Some days the air can force water up farther in a tube than it can on other days. If it can force the water up 33 feet today, it will perhaps be able to force it up only 30 feet immediately before a storm. And if it forces water up 33 feet at sea level, it may force it up only 15 or 20 feet on a high mountain, for on a mountain there is much less air above to make pressure. The pressure of the air is different in different places; where the air is heavy and pressing hard, we say the pressure is high; where the air is light and not pressing so hard, we call the pressure low. A place where the air is heavy is called an area of high pressure; where it is light, an area of low pressure. (See Section 44.)

WHAT MAKES WINDS? It is because the air does not press equally all the time and everywhere that we have winds. Naturally, if the air is pressing harder in one place than in another, the lower air will be pushed sidewise in the areas of high pressure and will rush to the areas where there is less pressure. And air rushing from one place to another is called wind.

APPLICATION 4. A man had two water reservoirs, which stood at the same level, one on each side of a hill. The hill between them was about 50 feet high. One reservoir was full, and the other was empty. He wanted to get some of the water from the full reservoir into the empty one. He did not have a pump to force the water from one to the other, but he did have a long hose, and could have bought more. His hose was long enough to reach over the top of the hill, but not long enough to go around it. Could he have siphoned the water from one reservoir to the other? Would he have had to buy more hose?

APPLICATION 5. Two boys were out hiking and were very thirsty. They came to a deserted farm and found a deep well; it was about 40 feet down to the water. They had no pump, but there was a piece of hose about 50 feet long. One boy suggested that they drop one end of the hose down to the water and suck the water up, but the other said that that would not work--the only way would be to lower the hose into the water, close the upper end, pull the hose out and let the water pour out of the lower end of the hose into their mouths. A stranger came past while the boys were arguing, and said that neither way would work; that although the hose was long enough, the water was too far down to be raised in either way. He advised the boys to find a bucket and to use the hose as a rope for lowering it. Who was right?

INFERENCE EXERCISE

EXPLANATORY NOTE. In the inference exercises in this book, there is a group of facts for you to explain. They can always be explained by one or more of the principles studied, like gravitation, water seeking its own level, or air pressure. If asked to explain why sucking through a straw makes soda water come up into your mouth, for instance, you should not merely say "air pressure," but should tell why you think it is air pressure that causes the liquid to rise through the straw. The answer should be something like this: "The soda water comes up into your mouth because the sucking takes the air pressure away from the top of the soda water that is in the straw. This leaves the air pressing down only on the surface of the soda water in the glass. Therefore, the air pressure pushes the soda water up into the straw and into your mouth where the pressure has been removed by sucking." Sometimes, when you have shown that you understand the principles very well, the teacher may let you take a short cut and just name the principle, but this will be done only after you have proved by a number of full answers that you thoroughly understand each principle named.

Some of the following facts are accounted for by air pressure; some by water seeking its own level; others by gravitation. See if you can tell which of the three principles explains each fact:

1. Rain falls from the clouds.

2. After rain has soaked into the sides of mountains it runs underground and rises, at lower levels, in springs.

3. When there are no springs near, people raise the water from underground with suction pumps.

4. As fast as the water is pumped away from around the bottom of a pump, more water flows in to replace it.

5. After you pump water up, it flows down into your pail from the spout of the pump.

6. You can drink lemonade through a straw.

7. If a lemon seed sticks to the bottom of your straw, the straw flattens out when you suck.

8. When you pull your straw out to remove the seed, there is no hole left in the lemonade; it closes right in after the straw.

9. If you drop the seed, it falls to the floor.

10. If you tip the glass to drink the lemonade, the surface of the lemonade does not tip with the glass, but remains horizontal.