How are boats that are incredibly heavy able to float on water and sail across ocean? I mean, the cruise ships these days are MASSIVE!! 🛳️
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Gravity wants to pull everything down. The ocean, ships, you and me. The denser the object, the stronger gravity pulls it down.
When it comes to floating, density is everything. An object less dense than water will float because size-for-size, water is pulled down harder than that object, so the water will always be underneath the object and the object will always be above the water (aka floating).
Ships are WAY less dense than water because they’re mostly filled with air with a thin structure of metal. Another way to think of it is if you took a ship-sized blob of water, it will weigh many many times more than the ship, therefore, the water wins the tug of war.
It’s akin to a balloon floating on a lake, you wouldn’t expect it to sink unless you filled it with water instead. The Titanic sank because as the air inside was replaced with water its total density began to increase until it weighed more than the water it displaced.
Side note, this is also the same reason hot air balloons fly. Hot air in the balloon is less dense than colder outside air.
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