• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Zippy Facts Logo

Zippy Facts

Interesting Random Facts

  • Animals
  • Culture
  • Firsts
  • Food
  • Geography
  • Health
  • History
  • Inventions
  • Language
  • Mythology
  • Odds
  • People
  • Religion
  • Science
  • Space
  • Universe
  • World
You are here: Home / Accomplishments / What Makes a Ship Float?

What Makes a Ship Float?

June 1, 2020 by Karen Hill

According to Newton’s law of gravity, every object exerts a pull on the things around it. Since the earth is millions of times bigger than the things around it, it pulls everything toward itself. If this were not so, everything on earth, including people, would go floating off into space.

Why then, when a ship is on the water, doesn’t the earth’s pull make it sink? After all, its frame, machinery, cargo, crew, and passengers are heavy, weighing thousands and thousands of tons.

The reason is that all boats and ships are designed with hollow areas that are filled with air. And while a ship does push some of the water aside as it floats, the large quantities of air inside it make it weigh less than the water it pushed aside. The water below it, however, weighs a great deal more and pushes the ship up, or makes it buoyant.

You can see this buoyant force when you put a blown-up beach ball in the water and the water seems to be pushing up on the ball.

What determines whether an object will sink or float is its density, how much air is inside it. A large piece of wood will float because air fills some of its spaces, but a small stone will sink because it has greater density, with no air in it.

The world’s largest ship of any kind is a French oil tanker, the Pierre Guillaumat, which weighs 554,000 tons!

Related Facts

  • How does a steel ship float on water if metal is heavier than water?
  • How does a steel ship float if it is heavier than water?
  • How do clouds float in the air if they contain a lot of water?
  • Why does a helium balloon float when a regular one falls down?
  • Why Does Ice Float On Water and Why Is Ice the Only Non-Metallic Substance To Expand When it Freezes?
  • Why Does Ivory Soap Float?

Filed Under: Accomplishments

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

Previous Post: « How Does a Fountain Pen Work?
Next Post: How Does a Submarine Go Up and Down? »

Footer

Follow

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • GitHub
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • Pinterest
  • StumbleUpon
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Categories

Accomplishments Animals Culture Firsts Food Geography Health History Inventions Language Mythology Odds People Religion Science Space Universe World Your Body

About

Zippy Facts empowers the world by serving educational content that is accessible to everyone.

A tribute to growing up, zippyfacts.com showcases interesting and unusual facts about the world.

Our mission is to use technology to facilitate knowledge transfer and sharing.

Copyright © 2021 Zippy Facts

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy