What is air?

All living things are made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Air is a gaseous mixture of the utmost importance for life on Earth, since it fulfills functions of protection from the sun’s rays and other foreign elements such as meteorites. It also provides the planet’s chemical dynamics with a set of indispensable elements of a gaseous nature, such as the oxygen necessary for respiration, and allows the hydrological cycle to take place, since it contains water vapor, which produces precipitation through condensation and cloud formation.

Air is composed of various gaseous elements, which normally cannot be differentiated or perceived separately, it is mainly composed of 20.94% oxygen, 78.08% nitrogen, 0.93% argon, 0.035% dioxide of carbon and 0.40% of water vapor, these being its predominant components. Air varies according to its location in the following layers of the atmosphere: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. The higher it is, the lower the pressure and the less weight the air will have, since the heavier elements it can contain are attracted with greater force by the Earth’s gravity.

In general terms, air is less heavy and has a lower density than water. It is transparent, colorless, odorless and tasteless, except when it is contaminated with some particular substance, it has no volume of its own since it is a gas and it is incapable of existing in a vacuum. It is also a good conductor of heat.

As human beings we never think about how the basic aspects on which we depend to survive such as water, air, fire, electricity, among others, are formed or come from. Now that we know a little more about air, I invite you to carry out the following experiment and apply our knowledge in practice.