I saw a video the other day explaining air pressure where a teacher breaks a ruler by hitting it over a table underneath a sheet of newspaper. I get generally how that works. But then she said atmospheric pressure is 14 psi and so the whole sheet has 7000lb of pressure on it. That’s BS right? Like it clearly doesn’t have 7000 lbs pressed against it? Isn’t that the weight of the column of air above it?
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PSI is pounds per square inch. It means for every inch of surface area, there are that many pounds of pressure. The 14 PSI of atmosphere is caused by the weight of the air, but if there are 500 square inches of surface area on an object, then 14 pounds /in^2 x 500 in^2 is 7000 pounds distributed across the entirety of the object.
It’s not heavy because it is pushing inward on the object from all directions. Like being at the bottom of a deep swimming pool, the water pressure might be enough to pop your ears going down, but it doesn’t feel heavy being down there. The pressure is pushing inward.
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