Hello,
Around my area, it’s well known that if you are wearing duck waders, you never get into a boat and go out deeper than your height. It’s because if you fall out of the boat, essentially the waders fill up with water and will sink you and you have no chance to remove them.
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I guess I’m confused on how this is possible since waders are open at the top. I don’t understand how they could ‘get heavier’ I guess. I understand why like, water balloons sink in a tub of water. That’s because of the resistance from the surrounding latex essentially making the water inside the balloon more dense than the surrounding water. I guess i just have a hard time understanding with an open top.
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It would be like a plastic grocery bag in the water, wouldn’t it? Sure, it would be harder to move and you would have more drag, but my understanding is you sink like a cinder block.
In: Physics
How heavy are they?
The additional weight would just be that of the waders. This could certainly make it more difficult to stay afloat and they’d hinder your ability to swim, but they shouldn’t be that much heavier.
A possible danger aspect is if they **don’t** fill with water and you’re not wearing some sort of life jacket, or even worse have a backpack with something heavy in it. In this situation the waders could fill with air, with the openings below the surface, creating a float for your feet while your torso is weighted down – if you fall in this will make it hard to keep your head afloat, especially if you panic.
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