--- title: The air presses on everything — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The air presses on everything», a lesson of the physics course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: We live at the bottom of a deep ocean of air, and all that air above us has weight, so it presses on everything it touches. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/) / The air presses on everything # The air presses on everything Lesson 14 of the physics course of Mova's primary school: 14 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/0/) — We live at the bottom of a deep ocean of air, and all that air above us has weight, so it presses on everything it touches. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/1/) — It presses from every side at once, up, down and sideways, on you, on the table and on the top of your juice. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/3/) — You never feel squashed, because the air and liquids inside your body push back just as hard, so the pushes balance. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/4/) — Many tricks, from a sucker on the tiles to a card holding water in an upside-down glass, are the outside air winning a pushing match. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/5/) — Air has weight; the air in an ordinary classroom weighs about as much as several children together. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/6/) — The air presses on every surface from all sides, and we do not feel it because our body pushes back just as hard. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/7/) — When you drink through a straw, you lower the air pressure inside it, and the air pressing on the drink in the cup pushes the drink up. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/8/) — A straw with a hole in its side stops working, because air leaks in and the pressure inside the straw cannot drop; and even a perfect pump cannot lift water more than about 10 metres up a pipe, because that is as far as the air can push it. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/9/) — On the Moon, where there is no air, drinking through a straw would not work at all. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/10/) — With a finger over the top of a straw, the drink stays in it, because the air below pushes up and no air can push down from above. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/11/) — A card can hold the water in an upside-down full glass, because the air pushes up on the card harder than the water pushes down. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/13/) — Blowing more air into a balloon packs more air inside, which pushes harder on the rubber, so it grows bigger and tighter. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/15/) — An empty bottle closed during a flight is squashed when the plane lands, because the thin air inside cannot push back against the stronger air at the ground. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/14-the-air-presses-on-everything/17/) — Astronauts need pressurised suits (suits with air pressed in), because in space there is no air pressing on the outside of their bodies. - ← previous: [Water safety and the ocean](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/13-water-safety-and-the-ocean/) - next →: [Wind and weather](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/15-wind-and-weather/) - ↑ back to [Physics](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/physics/)