There are many things that I have a problem understanding...
because they seem to contradict each other.
This is one of them.
There are others...
I understand that the moon causes a high tide when it passes overhead (gravitational influence)
but knowing that,
I do not understand why that causes a 2nd high tide on the opposite side of the earth.
I understand why hot air rises and cold air settles (buoyancy)...
but knowing that,
I do not understand why the beach is hot and the mountain tops are cold.
I understand why wind impacting you makes you feel cooler (wind chill),
but knowing that,
I do not understand why meteorites and returning spacecraft get hot when they impact the atmosphere.
I’d better not put any links about the Potsdam Gravity Potato then.
The high tide opposite the moon is caused by the lack of the moon’s gravity, because it’s about 8,000 miles farther away from the moon than the nearer side of the earth. The earth is also orbiting the earth-moon barycenter so some of it is caused by centrifugal force.
High altitudes are cold because the air is thinner. The individual air molecules contain the same amount of heat, but because there are less of them the temperature is lower.
Meteors generate heat because they are converting kinetic energy into thermal energy through friction. Wind chills you because it’s carrying away body heat through convection.
Mountaintops are in a thinner part of the atmosphere than beaches at sea level; not as much air to absorb sunlight to make heat.
If wind hit you at 17,500 mph, the speed that spacecraft travel at when re-entering the atmosphere, it would heat you up too; it would probably cook you as well.
The last is friction from the atmosphere
The next to last maybe atmosphere too and it’s less dense there and doesn’t hold heat like on surface
I can explain a couple of those.
1. Air pressure... Gravity holds the air from flying off into space. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have any air to breathe. The air pressure on earth is about 15 pounds per square inch. This means that every square inch of earth has about 15 pounds of air above it, if you totaled the weight of the air molecules all the way out until there aren’t any more. The higher you go, the less air there is above you to create that pressure. When you pressurize air it gets hot. All the energy it takes to make the pressure is turned to heat in the air. When you release that pressure, it cools by the came amount. That’s why air compressors need cooling fins. That means, the higher you go the colder it gets since the pressure is lower. It’s called the “lapse rate”. Look that up if you want more information about this.
2....Meteors and spacecraft get hot only because they’re coming in at an extremely high speed, thousands of miles per hour. When they hit molecules of air, they accelerate that molecule to nearly the speed they are travelling. Much of he energy of the collision (mass times velocity squared) in that molecule is turned into heat in the impacted item. At the very low speeds of cooling fans, the energy of the collision is negligible, and much of the cooling effect is either evaporation of sweat on a person’s skin, or also the cooler temperature of the blowing air.
I hope that helps for these two.
2.