Explain Air pressure to me

Question

When we travel by airplane, the pressure changes. What does that mean exactly? Why does it make my ears hurt?

Equally, deep sea diving and submersibles. Ive read that the glass has to be massively reinforced to stand the pressure. Is the change in pressure the same type for air and sea? I.e does pressure increase for both?

Edit; Everyone did great! I understand now! The answer is “Water be heavy” and “Air be heavy. Less air above you when you fly so less pressure”

In: 13

Answer 1

Everything has weight, including water and air. If you put a bucket water on your chest, it’s gonna weigh 10 pounds or so. You put a barrel of water on your chest, it’s gonna weigh a lot more. When you swim 10 feet down to the bottom of a pool, you have 10 feet of water above you. The weight of all that water is pushing on your body. That weight is what you feel pushing on your ear drums. If you plug your nose and blow, you increase the amount of air trapped in your sinuses and inner ear, which increases the pressure, which balances the push of the water on your ear drum, so you no longer feel it.

Air is exactly the same. At sea level, you have the whole atmosphere above you, and the weight of all that air is pushing on you, exactly as the water in the pool does. When you 10,000 feet up on a mountain, that’s about two miles less air above you. That’s less weight pushing on you, which changes the balance of pressure between the outside and the air trapped in your sinuses/inner ear. So you exchange some air with the outside to equalize that pressure, and the balance returns.

Airplanes are pressurized to approximately the equivalent of 10,000 feet. So the pressure in there is about the same as what you’d experience at the top of a mountain. So, it feels the same as if you were atop that mountain. You get on the plane, and your body is pressurized to ground level, and then the airplane exposes you to mountain-top pressure. You gotta equalize that pressure to fix the imbalance on your eardrum, just like on a mountain, just like at the bottom of a pool.