CHAPTER II - THE AIR

Summary

Let us leave the earth, in which we have burrowed for long enough, and turn our thoughts, and our eyes, upwards.

We all know what we may expect to see—the sun, the blue sky, and possibly some clouds, by day; stars, with perhaps the moon and one or more planets, by night. We see these objects by light which has travelled to us through the earth's atmosphere, and if we see them clearly, it is because the atmosphere is transparent—it presents no barrier to the passage of rays of light.

Perhaps we are so accustomed to this fact that we merely take it for granted. Or perhaps we think of the atmosphere as something too flimsy and ethereal ever to stop the passage of rays of light. Yet we know exactly how much atmosphere there is, for the ordinary domestic barometer is weighing it for us all the time. When the barometer needle points to 30, there is as much substance in the atmosphere over our heads as there is in a layer of mercury 30 inches thick. This again is the same amount as there would be in a layer of lead about 36 inches thick, for mercury is heavier than an equal volume of lead in the ratio of about six to five. To visualise the weight of the atmosphere above us, we may think of ourselves as covered up with 144 blankets of lead, each a quarter of an inch in thickness.