Pressure
Also called Fluid pressure
Pressure is the magnitude of the force component perpendicular to a surface divided by the area of that surface. It is a scalar, measured in pascals, where one pascal is one newton per square metre.
The AP sheet prints , and every word of essential knowledge 8.2.A.1 matters: only the component of the force perpendicular to the surface counts, and it is spread over the area it acts on. A force applied at an angle contributes only its perpendicular part.
EK 8.2.A.2 then states flatly that pressure is a scalar quantity. That is worth holding on to, because the force a fluid exerts on a wall certainly has a direction. Pressure does not: at a point inside a static fluid it pushes with the same magnitude on a surface facing any way, and the direction only appears once you pick a surface for it to act on.
Units: , and the AP tables give .
Two ideas hang off this one. Pressure in a fluid rises with depth as , and the part above the reference pressure is the gauge pressure. The same quantity turns up in Bernoulli's equation as an energy per unit volume, since is also .
The step-by-step depth calculations live in Fluids in AP Physics 1.