Test your knowledge of pressure in this KS3 Science quiz. Pressure is measured in Pascals. A pascal is a very small unit which is equal to spreading the weight of a small-sized apple over an area of one square metre. You can see a knowledge of pressure in action almost every day. Tractors have large wide tyres so they put less pressure on the soil in the fields - crops don't grow as well if the soil is compacted. Some mountain bikes, called 'fat bikes', have much wider tyres than normal mountain bikes. These put less pressure on the ground and can even be ridden on snow!
The equation for working out the pressure is to divide the force by the area on which it is acting. Questions about pressure will also require you to change the equation round to work out the force or the area when you are given the other two numbers. To calculate the area a force acts on to produce a pressure, you need to use the following equation: area = force/pressure and to work out the force from a pressure acting on a certain area: force = pressure x area.