Rohit blocks the nozzle of a syringe. He can push the plunger of an air-filled one a long way in…
Rohit blocks the nozzle of a syringe. He can push the plunger of an air-filled one a long way in; the plunger of a water-filled one barely moves. Rohit says water is completely solid inside with no empty space, and air is just emptiness. Meena says both are made of particles and only the spacing differs. Who is right?
Who do you think is right? Pick one.
The answer: Meena is right
Why
Rohit's experiment is real and his surprise is fair: the two syringes behave completely differently. But 'air is emptiness' is not the reason. Air is matter, particles with mass, just spaced far apart with a lot of room between them, so a push slides them closer and the plunger travels. In water the particles are already almost touching, with very little room to close up, so it hardly compresses at all, not because there are literally zero gaps but because they are tiny. Picture a crowd standing at arm's length, easy to squeeze together, versus one already packed shoulder to shoulder. Test: let go of the pushed-in air plunger and it springs back out, which empty space could never do. Meena is right: the same particle picture fits both, with different spacing.
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