Made of Iron and Carrying a Heavy Load, Why Can the Ship Still Float?

JAKARTA – Homecoming moment coming soon. For those who go home by sea, you may have wondered why ships float even though they are made of iron. As is known, iron is a heavy material that should sink if it is in water.

This is quite confusing, especially if the ship is large and not to mention the crew and other cargo which adds to the mass and weight of the ship by many tons. So how can this happen?

As summarized from various sources on Sunday (31/3/2024), this can happen because of a force called lifting force and the density level of the object itself.

This puzzle was solved by Archimedes, he was a Greek scientist. Archimedes’ principle states that the force exerted on an object in a liquid is equal to the weight displaced by that object.

This force, more commonly called the buoyant force, pushes upward against an object. There are two downward pressures or gravity that exert a force on objects that is determined by the mass of the object.

When the downward force applied to an object is less than the buoyant force, the object can float. Objects in water can float or sink depending on their density.

This also applies to ships in water, where in order to float the density of the ship must be less than that of water. That’s why ships have a secret formula, namely a part that contains air cavities.

The part of the ship’s hull that makes it balanced and able to float in the ocean. However, a ship can still sink if water enters it which forces the air out and makes the ship’s average density greater than that of water.

If we look at the case of the Titanic which hit a giant iceberg on the south coast of Newfoundland in 1912, the iceberg tore parts of the ship, resulting in small holes in the ship’s hull and resulting in a lot of water entering the crew.

The same method is also applied to submarines, where the ship has a cavity that can be filled with water when it wants to dive, and filled with air if it wants to float on the surface.

(wbs)