Air Occupies Spaces - Science Experiment Inspire Manak Award 2022
Properties of Air
Air is a mixture of different gases, mostly nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. Air has no color and it occupies space. It is transparent and it dissolves in water.
Air occupies spaces
Air is the most important thing in the world. It is unseen, but it can be felt. Air occupies space, but we cannot see it because it is not visible. Air is all around us and we cannot touch it because it cannot be touched. But air has a lot of effects on our lives, such as temperature and pressure.
Air can't be seen because it's not visible, but we can feel it because of its effects on our lives.
To demonstrate the effect of air on the level of liquid in a container, we need to assemble the following apparatus: a transparent water filled mug, two plastic cups and a piece of bleaching paper.
It is a gas and it has its own volume. The volume of air in a container is measured in litres or millilitres.
The experiment requires two people: one to hold the mug and one to pour water into it from an empty cup until it is full. The person holding the mug should take care not to touch the water with their hands or wet their clothes by leaning over too far when pouring, as this will affect measurements later on.
The person pouring should pour slowly and steadily, keeping an eye on how much water has been poured into the mug so that they can stop at exactly 100 ml (or 100 cm3).
EXPERIMENT :
Make the bleaching paper squeeze after cutting into two pieces. Keep the pieces on two plastic cups. Then turn e cup upside down with paper pieces on their mouths. Now keep one of the cups straight and pour water on it. It is abserved that the bleaching paper is getting wet. Then drown the second cup in upside down position in the water filled mug. Care must be taken it never touches the bottom of bigger mug. You will notice that the bleaching paper on the dry.
The experiment was conducted to find the reason behind the air occupying space. The experiment was conducted in a closed box with a small hole on one side. The air was pumped out of the box and the space was filled with water. This showed that air occupies space and not vice versa.
Reason :
The space in the glass got airtight when we inserted the glass after keeping it upside down. When the water in the mug exerted upward thrust, the air in the cup pressed the water downward. As there was no way for the air to get out it occupies its space on the upper part of the cup. As a result the water did not reach the place, so failed to make the paper wet.