Why can air be compressed but liquids can’t?
In: Physics
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.
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.
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
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