Question

How does atmospheric pressure change with altitude?

Answer 1

As we know that the pressure is the force that acts on the unit area. It is found that pressure of fluids also depends on the height, acceleration, and density due to gravity. We can see that when we go to higher altitudes, then we may experience altitude sickness basically due to change in the external pressure.

Complete answer:
- As we know that pressure is the force that acts on a unit area, and we can write the formula as:
Pressure = $\dfrac{force}{area}$
- It is found that all the fluids exert a pressure on their surroundings. For pressure in liquids, we can write the formula as:
$P=\rho gh$
- Where,
P is the pressure, h is the height, g is the acceleration done due to gravity and $\rho$ is the density.
- From the above equation we can see that pressure is directly proportional to height of the medium.
- But as we can see that when we go to higher altitudes, then the atmosphere becomes thinner as distance from the atmosphere decreases, hence h decreases and due to this pressure also decreases.
- Hence, we can say that pressure is directly proportional to height hence as altitude increases pressure decreases.

Note:
- As we know that when we go deeper in the ocean, then the amount of water that is exerting pressure on our bodies increases and therefore pressure increases. And we go at higher altitude places then the air gets thinner and hence pressure also decreases.