Why doesn’t the nitrogen in the air float above the oxygen in the atmosphere.
In: Physics
Turbulence in the atmosphere keeps the gasses mixed quite well. But above a certain altitude, the turbopause which is about 100km up, the densities of gas can have an effect on the composition of air at that point. So the air above 100km may be more nitrogen concentrated. The gases are also quite easily mixed because they don’t have such a strong attraction to one another. If you put oil in water, the oil almost immediately floats up because of how water molecules are more heavily attracted to each other. This doesn’t happen with nitrogen and oxygen. Mixing doesn’t happen very well above the turbopause due to lower pressures. So molecules have more space between them and less chance of colliding with one another allowing them to arrange themselves by their molecular weight.
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