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Look! It floats

The relationship between density and buoyancyThe tendency of a fluid to exert a lifting force on a body immersed in it. was studied in the third century B.C. by Archimedes, a Greek philosopher and inventor. The Archimedes Principle states that the lifting effect of a liquid on an object is equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by the object. Thus, if the object contains less mass than the mass of the displaced liquid, the object will float.

The Archimedes Principle is what makes steel ships float. If the mass of the displaced water—that is, the mass of the volume of water pushed aside by the hollow hull of the ship below the waterlineThe highest point to which water rises on the hull of a ship. The portion of the hull below the waterline is under water.—is greater than the mass of...

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1. Introduction
2. Density is measured on a relative scale
3. Relative density can be observed
4. Look! It floats
5. Experiment 1 - Density: Can a scale of relative density predict whether one material floats on another?
6. Experiment 2 - Buoyancy: Does water pressure affect buoyancy?
7. Design Your Own Experiment