I used to track my headaches to try to figure out what was causing them, in the hopes I could avoid them in the future. And from that exercise I learned how many things were in my control – food consumption, caffeine, dehydration, lighting/noise/fragrance levels (at home) – and what wasn’t – stress, sleep, hormonal changes, muscle tension, and barometric pressure aka atmospheric pressure.

And folks, that is what we are here to talk about today – the weight of the air.

When I was tracking headaches, I would go to our handy dandy weather app and click on the pressure icon. Sure enough, on headache days, I often saw a huge change in pressure from previous days.

“A ha!” I’d think, “I definitely have a pressure headache.” And I actually added that to something I tried to get more into my control – basically by pregaming for big pressure changes with lots of water and maybe some Tylenol the night before or morning of predicted pressure change.

But all that time, I did NOT really understand what atmospheric pressure was. I knew the ups and downs could be triggers, but didn’t understand what the ups and downs meant, or why it was going up and down at all. I surmised I got the headaches from the variation of pressure on my body but, again, WhAt Is ThIs?

Should I already know this? Did everyone learn this in school? Seriously. Is this common knowledge?

For all my unknowing, I was never curious enough to look it up and understand it and save it to memory.

Until recently.

Because guess what has a huge effect on flying? Atmospheric pressure. (Duh, right?)

I won’t bore you with the details! Promise!

It’s just that it’s all coming together, and I wanted to share that.

I understood it was important to have the altimeter (altitude of an aircraft above sea level) set to the most current reading (shared by the tower or a weather report) so we don’t hit other pilots or terrain. I understood density altitude (the pressure altitude based on the current air temperature) greatly affects the performance of the plane.

But I didn’t have a grasp on the basics. Cold air heavier. Warm air lighter. Because science. Changes all the time due to uneven heating of earth. Just like the super freaking basics people probably learn in what, GRADE SCHOOL?

Steven and I sometimes talk about the subjects we’d retake if we were going through school again. Like the K-12 stuff. History would be much more interesting. Ooo, geography too! Physics would be more applicable. Things don’t stick for me until I have a personal reference point, and apparently headaches weren’t enough.

Next up to tackle: gyroscopic forces.