Why can air be compressed but liquids can’t?

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Why can air be compressed but liquids can’t?

In: Physics

13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s about the same as crumpling a piece of paper. The more compact you go, the harder it gets. To the point where it may seem that you can’t compact it anymore. It’s compact enough for you to stand on it, even though it’s still possible to get it more compact, to your perception it can’t be compacted anymore.

So both gasses and liquids can be compressed, they just require a different amount of force.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It can be, hence hydraulics, but not nearly as much as gases. There’s more space between the molecules in gases than there is in liquids.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Liquids are already compressed. If you take an amount of liquid and let it boil off to gas, the volume of gas will be much much greater than the original amount of liquid. This is how steam power works, and why tanks of liquid gas are so dangerous.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine you and two friends are on a play ground. You can jump around and run. You are like a gas. But if needet all of you can squeez in in little play house. Now you are compressed.

Now Imagine you are Holding Handys with your friends. You can still move a bit but not as much as before. Now you are a liquid.

Maybe it is possible to Compress you a little bit, but not as much as before, when you where a gas.

If you Co press a Gas enough it will become liquid and mayve even Solid.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Liquid can and does compress, but water is particularly bad at it because it’s a highly polar molecule.

Gasses are more compressible, in general, because the moleculed within them have greater degrees of freedom.

Imagine trying to tell a group of people to squish together.

Gas is like having a room with 10 people in it and telling them to get closer.

Liquids are like having the same size room with 100 people in it and telling them to get closer.

Water is like having the same size room with 100 people, but none of them use deodorant and they all hate each other.

And since we’re on the subject, solids are like the same size room with anywhere from 100-1,000 people but they all have to stand in a certain place and if you make them squish the room breaks and the people fly off in different directions.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Liquids can be compressed, but significantly less than air (and all gases) can be compressed. It’s to do with the molecule structure. Compression forces molecules close together. In a solid, all these molecules are tightly packed together. So you can’t really compress, because there’s no room. In a liquid, there’s a bit more room, so you can compress it a little bit. Gases on the other hand have a lot more area to move around, and so you can compress them a lot more than liquids.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because there’s a lot of empty space between air molecules (or gas molecules in general) but almost no space between liquid molecules. If you actually force liquid molecules any closer they’ll start to form latice bonds and the liquid will freeze into a solid

Anonymous 0 Comments

Liquids and solids can be compressed. The fact sound waves can travel through it shows some level of compression.

With enough force, the amount of compression can be quite large. The plutonium core of an atomic bomb is compressed by a fact of 2 to 3 by the conventional explosives that drive the implosion.

Anonymous 0 Comments

What do you think water pressure is? Liquids can totally be compressed. Liquids and gases are even lumped into the same branch of science: [fluid mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_mechanics)

Anonymous 0 Comments

Gasses are more obviously compressed than liquids. Even metal can be compressed. In fact, compression of metal is what makes some nuclear weapons do their thing… it shoves the mass of metal to a higher density. But only for a tiny amount of time. But the results of doing so is quite spectacular. Or so I’m told.