I have no idea how it is possible that a boat floats. Some of them are made with concrete, or metal, and other heavy material that on their own would sink, regardless of shape. But somehow, when it’s used to build a boat, it floats just as fine even if it carries extremely heavy load.
So what is the science behind boat floating, but explained to me like I’m five? 🙂
In: Engineering
Displacement, in a word.
Try this: fill your kitchen sink with water. Put a bowl in it, in a way that the “U” shape of the bowl is going to stay dry, despite the outside & underside of the bowl being wet & submerged.
What’s happening is the weight of the bowl displaces a volume of water. If that volume of water would weigh more than the weight of the bowl, the bowl should float. Or at least, that is the general idea (you can probably google up the exact specifics – the weight & volume are both important factors for how much water is pushed out of the way by the boat).
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