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Welcome to our Physics lesson on Total Pressure in Water, this is the fifth lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Gas Pressure, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
As discussed in the previous tutorial Physics Tutorial: Liquid Pressure. Pascal's Principle, water pressure is calculate by the equation
where h is the depth from the water surface.
However, this is only a part of the total pressure exerted on an object immersed in water, i.e. the pressure exerted only by water (we called it "gauge water pressure"). Since water is within the atmosphere layer, we must add the value of air pressure to the gauge water pressure to obtain the total pressure on objects immersed in water. Mathematically, we have:
What is the total pressure exerted on an object located at the deepest point of oceans, at Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (Pacific Ocean) if the depth in that place is 10 929 m? Take the density of Pacific Ocean in deep sectors equal to 1050 kg/m3 and the air pressure above water in normal values.
The total pressure exerted on objects immersed in the given location, is
where
Adding this value to the normal atmospheric pressure (P0 = 101 325 Pa), we obtain for the total pressure at the deepest point of oceans:
Such a big value (about 112.6 Million Pa) makes impossible any animal life in that depth. Furthermore, it is a complete darkness in such depths as light is entirely absorbed by the water.
You have reached the end of Physics lesson 9.4.5 Total Pressure in Water. There are 6 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Gas Pressure, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.
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