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Role of science in our everyday life: How air pressure affects breathing, cooking, blood pressure, driving and flying
Breathing:
Altitude and air pressure are closely related. It is well known that as we go up higher the atmospheric pressure decreases. There are two reasons for decreasing air pressure at higher altitudes. Firstly, due to earth’s gravity, it pulls the air molecules as close to the surface of the earth compressing them to increase pressure at lower altitudes than at higher altitudes and secondly, as altitude increases the amount of gas molecules in air decreases making them less dense and hence exerting less pressure.
Because of lesser gas molecules, it is also colder due to fewer chances of air molecules bumping into each other. Also, due to lesser gas molecules, there is lesser oxygen at higher altitudes. This explains why it is difficult to breathe at higher altitudes and the lungs have to work extra harder to deliver oxygen to the blood. But people already living at higher altitudes have developed more efficient lungs and other adaptations due to natural selection to cope up with this challenge.
Thus the bottom line is, as:
Altitude increases, Pressure decreases, air molecules decreases, oxygen decreases, affecting…