Eli5: If water can’t be compressed under normal conditions, then how does water pressure work?

Question

Eli5: If water can’t be compressed under normal conditions, then how does water pressure work?

In: 18

Answer 1

You are mixing up compression and pressure they are two separate things.

Let’s say you want to increase the pressure of the water to 400 PSI you compress it, it’s volume won’t go down that much.

To do the same thing with air, the volume will go down a significant amount, you’ll have small space of 400 psi air.

Industry actually uses that to their advantage you can fit a heck of a lot of compressed gas in a compressed gas cylinder.