How did we discover air?

Question

Air cannot be felt and cannot be seen. How did we eventually realize air existed? How did we discover the existence of air? And no smart-*ss answers.

Answer 1

air was compressed and cooled to seperate the differant elements from each other . it was found at each element had a differant freezing point like co2 turnrs into a solid at -90 f while o2 turnes a liquid at - 186f and nitrogen - 192f

Answer 2

you definately can feel "air." have you ever felt the wind? that is just the movement of "air" moloculse. In actuality this is the movement of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, hydrogen, and several other gasses. "Discovering" it is pretty simple. Blow up a balloon. If you were blowing out nothing, the balloon wouldn't get any bigger, but it does. You are blowing air into the balloon, the air is taking up space, and so the balloon expands.

Answer 3

1. We can feel air (Wind)

2. If you have powerful enough microscope (Electron Microscope) we can see the molecules of air.

If this is a smart *ss answer, I'm just giving you the facts.

Answer 4

Weren't Earth, Water, Wind and Fire considered the 4 elements all the way back to Aristotle?

Air can be felt in many ways. And a balloon full of air weighs more (although not a lot more) that a balloon without air. Air can be seen by putting smoke into it. Remember, Air is different from pure oxygen which wasn't discovered until some time later.

Answer 5

That's an interesting question. I had a look at wikipedia on vacuum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Hist...

apparently they have been talking about it as far back as ancient greece, however, I'm not sure how they perceived air, since they also believed in ether.

The first people to have experimented with vacuum must have had some idea.

Anyway, it wasn't until the 18th century that scientists discovered the separate chemical components of air.

Answer 6

The ancient Greeks knew about air, but didn't realize it is a mixture of many different things. There are several ways you can determine that air exists: you breath it (and can blow it out), you can feel the wind, and you can see bubbles of air that you exhale while under water. Further, it doesn't take too long playing with pistons to realize that air can push back: there is pressure.

It wasn't until the 1600s that vacuums were made and studied. For a long time, it was thought that vacuums were impossible.

Answer 7

Individually, every person living first discovered air at the moment of birth.  Just didn't know what it was( or what anything else was for that matter).

Answer 8

Well considering everything is made of matter and "nothing" does not exist, scientists would have researched it and discovered that air is really a substance.

It would've been gradual, it philosophers and theorists would've been theorizing answers to what this substance was but when physics proves that everything is made of matter (except in the case of antimatter and such) we would've known that it was something and then eventually tests would've proved what it was.

There are also things lighter than air or that float scientists would've wanted an answer to that also.