Reading The Martian and thinking about things like depressurisation – why does air from a higher concentration feel the need to rush through a small leak with enough force to rip or blow things apart instead of staying put?
What calls it from the vacuum for it to be so obsessed in doing so?
In: Planetary Science
Gas is made up of many smal gas particles that move around at *very* high speeds and bump off of each other. They move around in all different directions.
If there is no or very little gas in an area (vacuum or very low pressure) then gas particles from a high pressure area that are travelling in the direction of that lower pressure region won’t have anything to bounce off of to redirect them back to the high pressure region, so they’ll just keep going in that direction and will wind up filling that space.
A very high pressure difference (like between mars’ atmosphere and the inside of the hab) means lots and lots of gas (air) molecules are travvellibg at very very high speeds towards a lower region (outside the hab) with very little in the way anything to stop them.
Theres probably a bunch of simulations on youtube showing this. Maybe look up something like “gas particles brownian motion simulation” or something.
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