Buoyant force

This simulation illustrates the concept of the buoyant force.

The buoyant force is the upward force exerted on an object by a fluid when the object is partly or entirely immersed in the fluid. In this case we place a low-density block in a container of fluid. The block floats with some fraction submerged (the fraction submerged is the block density divided by the fluid density). The buoyant force equals the weight of the block, because the block is in equilibrium. However, the buoyant force is also given by Archimedes' principle, which is that the buoyant force is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced (which itself is equal to the density of the fluid multiplied by g multiplied by the volume of fluid displaced by the object).

Investigate what the buoyant force depends on (and what it does not depend on). Note that the simulation sets g to be 10 N/kg.

Simulation written by Andrew Duffy, and first posted on 11-17-2018.

This work by Andrew Duffy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This simulation can be found in the collection at http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/classroom.html.

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