I can’t seem to wrap my head around the term pressure.
Vehicle tyres use air pressure, toilets faucets etc use pressure (presumably water pressure),
pressing onto something applies pressure, our blood has pressure, temperature is also affected by “pressure”.
I know there are various types of pressure, and I can’t think of any more examples at the moment, but my point is “pressure” sounds like a very arbitrary or vague umbrella term to me.
Help me make sense of it?
In: 3
A good way to start thinking about it intuitively is to consider laying a brick on the back of your hand. No big deal. Now consider putting a pebble on the back of your hand before you put the brick on. Not very comfortable. Now consider standing up a needle and trying to balance the brick on that. Ouchie.
So each time it got worse, the brick weighed the same. It got worse because that weight was being applied to a smaller and smaller area on your hand. We effectively increased the pressure each time we chose a smaller area of contact. That’s why pressure is always measuring force and area (pounds per square inch)
It’s why snow shoes work. Knives. Submarines. Hydraulics. The list is very long, but the idea is always about changing either the force being applied, or the area over which it is applied.
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