how do ships float?
In: Physics
When something enters the water, it displaces the water; pushes it out of the way. But water is heavy, and will resist this by pushing back on whatever the object is, to push it back out.
If the object is denser than water, the object’s pushing force is greater than the water’s, so it sinks.
If something is lighter than water, then the water’s pushing force will win, and the object will float. And when this is the case, the amount of water displaced is equal to how much the object weighs.
So take a small fishing boat, it weighs 100kg(220lb), and has 200kg(440lb) of people and stuff in it. In order for it to float, the water needs to exert 300kg of force upwards. The boat needs to displace 300kg of water in order to do that. Really, that’s not much water; 300L/80gal. So the boat’s only going to sink in a few cm/inches.
The problem is that if there’s a leak, and water starts flowing in, it’s counted in the “weight of the boat”.
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