I’ve always wondered and never understood how buoyancy works, especially with huge metal ships that I think should surely sink.
In: Physics
When you put something in a fluid, the fluid presses up on it. The amount it pushes up depends only on the volume of water that the object displaces, and it’s essentially the weight of this volume of water.
You can make ships out of steel, only if the inside of the ship consists of a mix of steel (= heavier than water) and air (= lighter than water). This also explains making ships out of concrete and other materials that are heavier than water. You can’t float a solid steel ship, but that’s not a super useful way to make steel ships (no inside is sub-optimal).
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