How does a boat the size of a small city float?
In: Engineering
Anything will float if it displaces enough water.
When an object is submerged, it occupies a volume of water. The underwater volume is called the displacement. If the weight of the water that gets displaced weighs the same as the ship, then the ship will float. If the volume is less than the weight ship, the ship will sink. In a sense, all ships sink, until they get deep enough so that they don’t. It may not look like it, but when you see a ship in the water, their hull can be 10 metres or so under water, which displaces a large volume of water. When the ship is deep enough, the underwater volume will be large enough to displace water equal to its weight.
Ships float because they have a large displacement/underwater value, but don’t weigh as much. Ships are huge and heavy, but they are mostly empty. Rocks sink because that small volume of water they displace does not weight the same as the rock. If a rock could displace more water—it it could occupy a large underwater space—it would float.
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