How does air and water affect a nail?

Well for starters Air particles are all around. They try to attach to pretty much everything. ( If you know what I mean ) Next water is hard to make it stick with just water So you could say to use a chemical to make it fully stick to the actual nail itself. I hoped that this helped.

I think that it is the oxygen in the air and in the water that affects the nail because most nails are made of iron and oxygen+Iron= Oxidation which is rust.

Distance^2= yellow line ^2 (see picture) = 30^2 + 49^2so distance = squareroot of (300^2 +49^2)i dont know if this is how to solve it, but i cnt think of another way