Eli5 why hippos can’t swim because of their weight yet blue whales can
In: 7
Weight doesn’t determine wether or not something floats, density does.
Archimedes’s law says “ a body immersed in a fluid experiences an upthrust equal to the weight of the fluid displaced”, which is is fancy way of saying that if an object is heavier than the (in this case) water it displaces, is sinks. If the opposite is true, it floats.
A rock sinks in water because it is more dense, a ball on the other hand shoots up to the surface because it is far less dense than water. The denser the rock, the faster it sinks, the less dense the ball, the faster it rises.
From this knowledge we can deduce that a hippo is denser than water, and therefore sinks. The opposite is true for the blue whale, which is why it floats.
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