why can’t we compress liquid ?
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Simply put, its because the molecules that the liquids are made of are already densely packed together. Also, its not that liquids cannot be compressed, it just can’t be compressed enough to be worth the effort.
They can, and depending on which liquid you’re testing, slightly more or less.
All states of matter (solid, liquid and gas – I won’t confuse things with the two lesser known states of plasma & bose-einstein condensate) contain molecules.
Imagine you were able to zoom in with a microscope and see what things are made of. You would see molecules inside, like glass marbles.
If you zoomed in to look at a gas, there is a lot of space between these molecules (marbles) which float around each other.
In a liquid, there is less space between these molecules, as they slip past each other. Some are a bit closer together, some are a bit further away.
In a solid, rows of very tightly packed molecules stand shoulder to shoulder with each other, not moving around much, if at all.
If you took a syringe, filled it full of air, held the end, you’re able to hold the plunger and squeeze the molecules closer together (not making them smaller), essentially removing the space between them.
Now, in a liquid, there is far less space between those same molecules, so fill the syringe with water or oil, and you might find you can squeeze a tiny bit, but not a lot in comparison to the air.
In a solid, this is almost impossible to do because there is no room between molecules.
So, molecules don’t change thier size under pressure, the space around them does.
Because the liquid is already compressed. Liquid at the bottom of the ocean compresses ~15%(?). There is a planet that has water so deep that the bottom 8000 meters of the deepest point is ice, because of the compression, despite the temperature being like 50 degrees
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