what is pressure?

Answer 1

Pressure is average normal force per unit surface area

Answer 2

normally, force is not pin-pointed as assumed in most cases. In reality, force is always applied over an area. In those cases, force per unit area is used for calculation.

An example of pressure wud be a balloon. Suppose you fill a balloon with an additional pressure of p. This means that the air exerts a force p per unit area.

Answer 3

a force acting normally on unit area

put simply for a given force the smaller the area the greater will be the pressure exerted a lady will exert greater presssure when she wears high heeled shoes than flats
snow shoes are broad .so they exert less pressure for easier walking on snow

Answer 4

A force that is in all directions, in a liquid, and only a vector in solids, caused by gravity in most natural cases.

Answer 5

Pressure (symbol: p) is the force per unit area applied on a surface in a direction perpendicular to that surface. Mathematically:


where:


p is the pressure
F is the normal force
A is the area.
Pressure is a scalar, and has SI units of pascals, 1 Pa = 1 N/m2.

Pressure is transmitted to solid boundaries or across arbitrary sections of fluid normal to these boundaries or sections at every point. It is a fundamental parameter in thermodynamics and it is conjugate to volume.
[edit] Example
As an example of varying pressures, a finger can be pressed against a wall without making any lasting impression; however, the same finger pushing a thumbtack can easily damage the wall. Although the force applied to the surface is the same, the thumbtack applies more pressure because the point concentrates that force into a smaller area. Pressure is transmitted to solid boundaries or across arbitrary sections of fluid normal to these boundaries or sections at every point. Unlike stress, pressure is defined as a scalar quantity.

The gradient of pressure is called the force density.


[edit] Absolute and gauge pressure
For gases, pressure is sometimes measured not as an absolute pressure, but relative to atmospheric pressure; such measurements are called gauge pressure (also often spelled gage pressure).[1] An example of this is the air pressure in an automobile tire, which might be said to be "220 kPa", but is actually 220 kPa above atmospheric pressure. Since atmospheric pressure at sea level is about 100 kPa, the absolute pressure in the tire is therefore about 320 kPa. In technical work, this is written "a gauge pressure of 220 kPa". Where space is limited, such as on pressure gauges, name plates, graph labels, and table headings, the use of a modifier in parentheses, such as "kPa (gauge)" or "kPa (absolute)", is permitted. In non-SI technical work, a gauge pressure is sometimes written as "32 psig", though the other methods explained above that avoid attaching characters to the unit of pressure are preferred.[2]

Gauge pressure is a critical measure of pressure wherever one is interested in the stress on storage vessels and the plumbing components of fluidics systems. However, whenever equation-of-state properties such as densities or changes in densities must be calculated, pressures must be expressed in terms of their absolute values. For instance, at an altitude of 112 m, the mean atmospheric pressure is 100 kPa. At this altitude, a pressure vessel containing any gas (such as helium) at 200 kPa-gauge (300 kPa-absolute) is 50% more dense than at 100 kPa-gauge (200 kPa-absolute); not double the density as one might assume by focusing on gauge values.


[edit] Scalar nature of pressure
In a static gas, the gas as a whole does not appear to move. The individual molecules of the gas, however, are in constant random motion. Because we are dealing with an extremely large number of molecules and because the motion of the individual molecules is random in every direction, we do not detect any motion. If we enclose the gas within a container, we detect a pressure in the gas from the molecules colliding with the walls of our container. We can put the walls of our container anywhere inside the gas, and the force per unit area (the pressure) is the same. We can shrink the size of our "container" down to an infinitely small point, and the pressure has a single value at that point. Therefore, pressure is a scalar quantity, not a vector quantity. It has a magnitude but no direction associated with it. Pressure acts in all directions at a point inside a gas. At the surface of a gas, the pressure force acts perpendicular to the surface.

A closely related quantity is the stress tensor σ which relates the vector force F to the vector area A via


This tensor may be divided up into a scalar part (pressure) and a traceless tensor part shear. The shear tensor gives the force in directions parallel to the surface, usually due to viscous or frictional forces. The stress tensor is sometimes called the pressure tensor, but in the following, the term "pressure" will refer only to the scalar pressure.


[edit] Kinetic nature of pressure
Main article: kinetic theory
In 1738, Swiss physician and mathematician Daniel Bernoulli published Hydrodynamica which laid the basis for the kinetic theory of gases. In this work, Bernoulli positioned the argument, still used to this day, that gases consist of great numbers of molecules moving in all directions, that their impact on a surface causes the gas pressure that we feel, and that what we experience as heat is simply the kinetic energy of their motion.


[edit] Negative pressures
While pressures are generally positive, there are several situations in which a negative pressure may be encountered:

When dealing in relative (gauge) pressures. For instance, an absolute pressure of 80 kPa may be described as a gauge pressure of -21 kPa (i.e. 21 kPa below atmospheric pressure).
When attractive forces (e.g. Van der Waals forces) between the particles of a fluid exceed repulsive forces. Such scenarios are generally unstable since the particles will move closer together until repulsive forces balance attractive forces. Negative pressure exists in the transpiration pull of plants.
The Casimir effect can create a small attractive force due to interactions with vacuum energy; this force is sometimes termed 'vacuum pressure' (not to be confused with the negative gauge pressure of a vacuum).
Depending on how the orientation of a surface is chosen, the same distribution of forces may be described either as a positive pressure along one surface normal, or as a negative pressure acting along the opposite surface normal.
In the cosmological constant.

[edit] Hydrostatic pressure (head pressure)
Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure due to the weight of a fluid.


where:

ρ (rho) is the density of the fluid (i.e. the practical density of fresh water is 1000 kg/m3);
g is the acceleration due to gravity (approx. 9.8 m/s2 on Earth's surface);
h is the height of the fluid column (in meters. Feet can be used if the rest of the units used in the equation are defined in feet).
See also Pascal's law.


[edit] Stagnation pressure
Stagnation pressure is the pressure a fluid exerts when it is forced to stop moving. Consequently, although a fluid moving at higher speed will have a lower static pressure, it may have a higher stagnation pressure when forced to a standstill. Static pressure and stagnation pressure are related by the Mach number of the fluid. In addition, there can be differences in pressure due to differences in the elevation (height) of the fluid. See Bernoulli's equation (note: Bernoulli's equation only applies for incompressible flow).

The pressure of a moving fluid can be measured using a Pitot probe, or one of its variations such as a Kiel probe or Cobra probe, connected to a manometer. Depending on where the inlet holes are located on the probe, it can measure static pressure or stagnation pressure