What makes an object float or sink?

Question

does anyone know tha answer in smart terms??.....=/

Answer 1

How much density or mass the object has.

Answer 2

Weight and mass??? Are you kidding me?

For those that answered with only weight and mass, how does an aircraft carrier float? Steel seems pretty dense. All of that steel, 5,000 sailors, aircraft, fuel, weapons, etc. seem to weight a lot.

So how does an aircraft carrier float, but a golf ball sinks? A golf ball has a plastic outer shell. Plastic floats right? Next, there are some rubber bindings around the core. Rubber floats right?

dwobbit has the best answer.

Answer 3

Supply list: Empty water bottle Plastic pen cap( with the spike on the end) Some clay or putty Water Take the pen cap and plug the little hole at the tip nice and tight. Use some more clay or putty or and small weight (enough to keep the cap upright) and stick it on the end of the spike thing. Now fill the bottle with water almost all the way and drop the pen cap in. Make sure some air is trapped in it. Now cap the bottle up. To control the buoyancy, apply pressure to the bottle. As you squeeze the bottle, the air holding the pen cap up will compress, increasing density. It now sinks. Let go of the bottle and the pen cap will float up again. Try it out.

Answer 4

The density of the water and the object affects the objects bouyancy. If the object is less dense than the water, it will float. If it is more dense it will sink. Also, when diving, adding air to your mass, (whether by inhaling or inflating your BCD) you will tend to float. If you exhale or deflate your BCD you will sink. When you float the term is called positively buoyant. When you sink the term is called negatively buoyant. When you neither float nor sink, you are neutrally buoyant.

Answer 5

A very good question, but very easy answered. it is simple that an object say wood for instance has lots of holes inside it which trap air so this makes it lighter than the heaver water molecules so it floats, now iron has no air in side so it is heavier than the water so it sinks, Now I know what U R going to say but they had iron ships and that is very true but because they were filled with air this made them lighter than the water so they fluted. But scientifically it's all to do with gravity and the viscosity of the water, which would take a long time to explain. hope this helps.

Answer 6

Mass makes things sink/float. little mass = float
more mass = sink

Answer 7

How dense it is matters if it floats or sinks. Density= Mass/Volume.

Answer 8

The simple answer is that if the object weighed less than the fluid it displaces and was submerged in the fluid, the upward pressure would be greater than the downward pull of gravity and it would float.

Answer 9

if you people don't know the answer why don't you just say so then maybe people who can give a sensible answer will and people who really want to know can get a real answer !

Answer 10

how heavy it is ( its mass/weight ) the less weight the more it has the tendency to float above the water.