explain why an iron nail sinks in sea water while a ship, a billion times bigger than a nail floats?

Answer 1

Because of its shape and water displacement.

Answer 2

Are you serious?

The ship floats because it isn't solid. By being shaped in the form of what we call a boat, the iron ship is able to displace a volume of water that weighs more than the entire ship.

If you had a ship that was completely solid, that is just solid iron, like the nail, and no air chambers, like rooms, and all of that crap, it would sink too.

Answer 3

Air pockets will make anything float if given the right depth. A ship will actually sink below the water line to give it stability of rolling over and over. Even more when they load the bottom full of fuel and cargo. All ships try to keep much more weight in the bottom than the top.

Take a swim sometime and blow out all of your air, and see what happens if you do not flail to stay afloat. Basically the same thing in a way. Air can lift many times it's weight in water amongst gravity, because water is only one part Oxygen and 2 parts hydrogen, thus the pure oxygen not being mixed is much lighter is rising to escape.

Answer 4

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. So if a boat weighs 1,000 pounds (or kilograms), it will sink into the water until it has displaced 1,000 pounds (or kilograms) of water. Provided that the boat displaces 1,000 pounds of water before the whole thing is submerged, the boat floats. It is not very hard to shape a boat in such a way that the weight of the boat has been displaced before the boat is completely underwater. The reason it is so easy is that a good portion of the interior of any boat is air (unlike a cube of steel, which is solid steel throughout). The average density of a boat -- the combination of the steel and the air -- is very light compared to the average density of water. So very little of the boat actually has to submerge into the water before it has displaced the weight of the boat.

Answer 5

A ship doesn't sink because of its shape.
Archimedes Principle- The water displaced by the solid is equal to the weight of the solid.
In simple words:-
Take a glass of water(fill the glass completely) and put something solid which sinks.
When you put the solid item some water pours out.
If you weight the water which poured out and compare the weight with the weight of the solid item.....they will be the same....
So that principle is applied in the case of the ship..

Answer 6

....That's like asking... why do two objects, one bigger and heavier than the other, if thrown off a building, hit the ground at the same time?

Isn't it blatantly obvious?

But I'll humor you.

Nails are solid and dense, they will never float.
Ships are complete with air pockets, equipped to float on top of water. It's all about physics..

Answer 7

a nail is solid steel. a ship is larger, but the density of the ship as a whole is less because it is not solid steel. the insides of a ship are not solid. if you got a drill and drilled out the middle of a nail so it is hollow with thin walls, then resealed it, the nail would float.

Answer 8

Iron nails have no air in them.
Inside a ship there is air, so the ship can float.
It's somewhat like why a rubber float works.
Humans have air inside them too, in our lungs, that's why we can float too.

Answer 9

Its called buoyant force. The nail displaces less water than its mass, so it sinks, whereas the boat, because of its hollow hull, displaces more water than its mass, allowing it to float.

Answer 10

Because the boat is really... a duck.
Like a duck the boat displaces water. When the amount of water displaced is more than the mass of the boat it will float.

Answer 11

the nail is more dense than the water while the ship's density is lower than that of water.
the ship is also able to displace more water than its own weight.

check the archimedes' principle for this