What is a gas made of and why can it be squeezed?
The Invisible Swarm
What is a gas made of and why can it be squeezed?
Take a deep breath. Whatever just rushed into your lungs is a gas — air — and it weighs almost nothing and seems like pure nothingness. But here's the secret: a gas is not nothing at all. It's a crowd of tiny things, far too small to see, zipping around like an invisible swarm of bees in a very big room.
Everything around you is built from incredibly tiny building blocks called molecules. In a solid, like a brick, the molecules are packed tight and hold hands. In a liquid, like water, they slosh and slide past each other. But in a gas, they let go completely and fly apart, each one off on its own little adventure.
