Like if carbon dioxide is in the air how did we know it was CO2? We didn’t just zoom into the air and C bouncing around with 2 Os
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Carbon dioxide in the air:
People knew that fire can be suffocated, but it took a while to figure out why.
Someone figured out that there’s changes in the volume and density of the air that fire consumed. He found that something in the air gets heavier when that air is used for combustion. On the other hand, the burning medium (for example wood) gets lighter. The overall weight remains the same. Therefore, something in the air combines with something from the wood.
(other fuel gets heavier: iron wool for example catches oxygen and gets heavier while the air loses it).
After such research, eventually we knew that there’s oxygen and also carbon dioxide.
More experiments figured out how carbon dioxide behaves with other chemicals. It binds to calcium easily, and forms a solid compound when streamed through water containing calcium.
The amount of that calcium carbonate tells us how much CO2 was pumped through the calcium water, and can be used to measure the amount of CO2 in the air.
Today we use more sophisticated ways to measure the composition of air, using light as mentioned in the other comment. Shining special light through the air and measuring the resulting light can tell us what’s in the air, and even the percentage of single components.
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