Before you read this, I suggest you read posts 17.6 and 17.7 A cruise ship has a mass of about 5 ×107 kg. (This is usually called the tonnage of the ship and is usually measured in US tons or metric tonnes). How can this be measured? First notice that part of a floating ship… Continue reading 17.8 Weighing a ship

Before you read this, I suggest you read posts 16.44 and 17.6. Suppose you are asked to find out whether a gold ring is made of solid gold or a cheaper metal with a gold coating. You need to do this without damaging the ring. How are you going to do it? The simplest way… Continue reading 17.7 Solid gold?

Before you read this post, I suggest that you read posts 16.44 and 17.5. In post 16.44, I wrote that stuff that has a lower density than water will float on water. Why? Let’s think of an object that sinks suspended in water by a thin thread, as shown on the left-hand side of the… Continue reading 17.6 Floating

Before you read this, I suggest you read post 16.44. In post 16.37 we thought about liquids as fluids – things that can flow. But if we have liquid in a container, it doesn’t usually flow. Suppose the container has vertical sides and a cross-sectional area of A. If the column of liquid in the… Continue reading 17.5 Stationary liquids