ELI5. How/why does pressure generate heat?

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Pressure causes item to get hot (to the extreme being enough pressure creating a star).

But if heat is essentially the movement of atoms, why does more pressure cause more heat?

Ie. The focused pressure of an ice skate blade makes the ice under it to melt.

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5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Air molecules have mass. Their quivering motion carries momentum and energy. The faster they quiver, the more energy they carry.

A volume of gas is like a gymnasium filled with tens of thousands of little rubber balls all bouncing around inside. Assuming negligible gravity and that the balls lose very little energy per bounce, the collective force of the bounces against the gym walls represents the gym’s pressure. The speed at which the balls travel between bouncing off the walls and each other is their temperature.

Now, decrease the size of the gym. The same balls with the same amount of energy now bounce off the walls more often, and the increase in collisions between them propels the balls faster as they bounce out of each others’ way.

Thus both pressure and temperature increase, but in a smaller volume.

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