About This Lesson
Take a sheet of tinfoil and shape it into a little canoe. Now fill up the sink with water. Place the canoe in the water. Yep, it floats. Crumple the canoe. Down it goes. The crumpled ball weighs exactly as much as the canoe did. Why doesn’t it float? The answer is in displacement. An object that displaces its own weight in water will float, regardless of how heavy it is. That’s why multi-ton battleships don’t sink: as long as they push aside their own weight in water, they’ll stay on top.
