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
There’s quite a lot of atmosphere above you. Depending on how you define it, some 80 to 100km of it. All that air has weight, and that weight is pushing in on your body from all sides. That is the air pressure at sea level, just the weight of all the air above you pressing in on you.
When you fly higher, there is now less air above you so the pressure gets lower. But the pressure inside your ear hasn’t changed. There’s now air pressing from the inside of your ear which makes it hurt.
With the ocean, it’s similar, but… Water is much heavier than air is, so as you dive deeper the pressure rises much much faster, in fact, for every 10 meters you dive the pressure increases by about 1 atmosphere (the air pressure at sea level). So just diving 100 meters down, means your submarine needs to be 10 times as strong as it would need on the surface.
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