There is less air pressure at the top of a mountain, why is this?

Question

Science homework help, please!

Answer 1

Air has weight. Pressure is the weight of the air above you puching down on you. There is less are above you the further up the mountain you go.

Answer 2

There is less air above you.

Taking air pressure is kind of like weighing an invisible column of air from you to the top of the atmosphere.  The higher up you are, the less air there is in that column.

Answer 3

The pressure in the air in from the rest of the air pushing down on it.  So if you measure higher up, there is less air above you, so there is less pressure

Answer 4

Basically, there is less pressure pushing down on you.

Answer 5

It has to do with density. The air at sea level is denser, or heavier than air at the top of the mountain which is less dense.

As one person pointed out a 1" square column of air weighs 14.7 pounds at sea level. The higher you go the "less dense'

or lighter the column of air gets.

Air pressure comes from different density in the air which is also effected by temperature and humidity.

Answer 6

The air pressure is the weight of the overlying coloumn of air at that level over unit area of the place.This air coloumn becomes less and less as you go up.So ,the pressure also decreases.