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How do you float on water?

Updated: 8/11/2023
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12y ago

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When you float in water gravity has an even amount on top of you and on the bottom, also onto upthrust is pulling you up so you do not drown.

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Here's the answer... Don't be dense. No, no I don't mean it that way. Density is the amount of matter in a given volume of a thing. A cubic inch of lead contains more matter-- it's more massive-- than a cubic inch of balsa wood. The lead will sink in water; the balsa will float. Say that you have equal masses of lead and balsa wood. You can see that you would have a much larger volume of balsa wood than lead. The lead will still sink, and the balsa will still float. So density is the relationship between the amount of matter in a thing, and how much space that matter takes up.

Think of a balloon filled with pool water, and then released into the pool. We can disregard the material the balloon is made of. It's easy to see that the balloon won't float. You are just taking a small volume of water and isolating it. In fact, you could push the balloon down toward the bottom of the pool and it will not readily float upward. It will tend to follow the currents in the pool, and it might even tend to sink to the bottom. Now take a balloon filled with air (not helium). This balloon will float and will hardly make a dent in the water. But you would have trouble getting it to stay below the surface without some kind of restraint. The water-filled balloon is almost perfectly buoyant (it has the same density, or specific gravity, as the water-- except for the small amount of material the balloon is made of). The air-filled balloon is MUCH less dense than water.

Human bodies are less dense than water. That's why they float. Muscle mass is more dense than body fat. A slim and well-muscled individual can easily swim down to get the water-filled balloon and can stay down easily. If such a person exhales as much as possible, she/he might even sink, or be able to lay on the bottom for a few moments. A person with more body fat may even have trouble submerging. The difference is density.

Anything, including people, will only float in water when it displaces more than its weight in water. This means if something weighs ten grams, it has to have enough surface area to push ten grams of water out of its way, if it cannot achieve this it will sink, if it can push more water than its weight it will float. Humans are full of fat and oxygen (the lungs) so mostly we displace more water than our weight, though if you breath fully out you will sink.

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13y ago
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12y ago

Because salt water is denser than fresh water due to the dissolved salt (usually sodium chloride) in it. As you may already know the denser something is the more it will sink and by extension other things will float.. If there is enough salt in the water, such as in the dead sea, then it is nearly impossible to swim underwater.

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12y ago

well, basically to float you need to keep on moving or when you are doing back stroke for instants to float you have to stick your belly and all your body up to float and on front stroke you need to stick your bum up so you will float!

Also, when we step into a bath, for instance, you will notice than when you sit down the water seems higher. This is because you have pushed water out of the way in order to sit down.

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14y ago

its actually we can float on water because ...when we go into water the weight of our body lows down and we start to float...its actually that things that are having less weight floats on water and things that are having more weight sinks....eg:put a pencil in water ..its sinks cuz...it has more weight on the other hand put a peice of wood in water it floats cuz...its has less weight.....

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12y ago

air, buoyancy takes place when air is in the object in the water that's why pumpkins float

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12y ago

because all the preasure....

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12y ago

buoyancy & gravity

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Q: How do you float on water?
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