Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Note that hA is the volume of the cube. Multiplying volume, V, by density, gives you the mass of the water displaced by the cube, m, so you can replace with m: Fbuoyancy = mg You should recognize mg (mass times acceleration due to gravity) as the expression for weight, so the force of buoyancy is equal to the weight of the water displaced by the
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-buoyancy-using-archimedess-principle.navId-407029.html?print=true 1/3
2/19/2014
object youre submerging: Fbuoyancy = Wwater displaced That equation turns out to be Archimedess principle. Heres an example of how to use Archimedess principle. Suppose the designers at Acme Raft Company have hired you to tell them how much of their new raft will be underwater when its launched. You can see the new Acme raft in the figure.
A raft in water. The density of the wood used in their rafts is 550 kilograms/meter3, and the raft is 20 centimeters high. You get out your clipboard and reason that to make the raft float, the weight of the raft must equal the buoyant force the water exerts on the raft. Say the raft is of height h and horizontal surface area A; that would make its weight equal to the following:
Now whats the buoyant force that the water exerts on the raft? The buoyant force is equal to the weight of the water that the submerged part of the raft displaces. Say that when the raft floats, the bottom of the raft is a distance y underwater. Then the submerged volume of the raft is Ay. That makes the mass of the water displaced by the raft equal to the following:
The weight of the displaced water is just its mass multiplied by g, the acceleration due to gravity, so multiplying both sides of the equation by g gives you the weight, Wwater
displaced, on the
left side of the equation. The displaced weight of water equals the
following:
For the raft to float, the weight of the displaced water must equal the weight of the raft, so set the values for raft weight and water weight equal to each other:
A and g appear on both sides of the equation, so they cancel out. The equation simplifies to
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-buoyancy-using-archimedess-principle.navId-407029.html?print=true
2/3
2/19/2014
Solving for y gives you the equation for how much of the rafts height is underwater:
Plugging in the densities tells you how far the raft is submerged in terms of the rafts height:
That means that 55 percent of the raft will be underwater. So if the raft is 20 centimeters (or 0.20 meters) high, how much is underwater when its floating? You can plug in the value for the rafts height to find the answer: y = 0.550(0.20 m) = 0.11 m So 11 centimeters of the rafts height will be underwater.
Copyright 2014 & Trademark by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-buoyancy-using-archimedess-principle.navId-407029.html?print=true
3/3