2006-06-13 08:13:32 · 12 answers · asked by pedro 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Engineering
They are less dense than water. Lots of open space inside makes a ship more like a honeycomb than a block. So, the weight-to-volume ratio is less than water. Just imagine how much a hull full of water would weigh!!!
2006-06-13 08:21:54 · answer #1 · answered by scott_d_webb 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The ship floats because it is buoyant. Try a little mental exercise. If you could freeze the water completely surrounding the ship and then lift the ship out it would leave a hole in the ice. You could then measure the cubic feet of water needed to fill the hole. If you had a giant seasaw and placed the ship on one end, it would exactly balance the amount (weight) of water needed to fill the hole the ship made. Of course it would be much easier to do this with a model ship or even a block of wood in a lab but the results would be the same. As they load the ship with cargo, it makes a larger hole in the water and is balanced by more water. If you load too much cargo, the ship makes such a large hole in the water that water spills into the ship filling and sinking it.
2006-06-13 10:01:58 · answer #2 · answered by Kes 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Cruise ships float because the water they displace weighs much more than the entire cruise ship. Water weighs a lot. A whole lot. Your standard Carnival cruise ship displaces about 22 feet of water and is about 900 feet long and 110 feet wide. This comes to 2,178,000 cubic feet of water displaced. If water weighs 62.4 pounds per cubic foot, this means that the ship displaces 135,907,200 pounds of water (about 68,000 tons). This is the same as the weight of the ship. The volume of the ship, however, is much larger than the same volume of water. The ship, instead of being 22 feet tall, is about 120 feet tall, so, you get about 98 feet of ship sticking out of the water.
Any object that weighs less than an equal volume of water will float on the water. Any object that weighs more than the volume of water it displaces will sink.
2006-06-13 08:25:43 · answer #3 · answered by lumos 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Good question.
Those sure are big boats, huh? Well, Pedro it's actually pretty simple; the big boats push more water (in weight ) out from under them than they weigh. The word is called "displacement".
So if you took all of the water that it pushes out from under it, and put it on a big giant scale, it would be heavier than the boat itself!
2006-06-13 08:21:22 · answer #4 · answered by Humbler 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The standard definition of floating was first recorded by Archimedes and goes something like this: An object in a fluid experiences an upward force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.
2006-06-13 08:17:39 · answer #5 · answered by DC 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Things float because the water they displace weighs exactly what they do. The water pressure trying to refill the hole the body makes tries to squeeze it up out of the water and makes it float.
2006-06-13 08:16:08 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
the mass of the boat is less the amount of water it displaces
2006-06-13 13:34:21 · answer #7 · answered by brian m 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
because the boat has less mass that the amount of water it displaces.
2006-06-13 08:16:10 · answer #8 · answered by sprcpt 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They float because they have the perfect amount of air in them, which adds buoyancy. Buoyancy is the ability to float.
2006-06-13 08:19:26 · answer #9 · answered by anonymous 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because the water they displace is equal to or less than their mass o_O
2006-06-13 08:17:32 · answer #10 · answered by jedi_junkie05 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋