I have the elusive dangerous substance in my possession!

Replace the 150 cc of water with a 150g steel weight. This should not affect the outcome, but it's easier to see. Post a photo.

Yes you can (setting aside the issue of softness of our bodies)

i

If it is floating it is a function of mass only.

If it sinks it is a function of volume only.

John

I agree that the outcome would be no different. Since I don't have any

150 gm steel weights laying around, I'd have to make one. 150 gm of lead shot or sand might be easier.

I did the experiment to verify for myself that I hadn't missed something in my reasoning. I'm satisfied -- but by all means let the debate continue!

But is that really "floating" anymore?

AS the guy who jumped in and started this little argument, I will say, I was wrong.

It does not need to be identical cups, but the closer they are to the same shape the better it works. WHile this is not what I would have thought of as "Floating" when I made my comment, but a simple mental experiment shows that it indeed is floating.

Take ANY object floating in a vast ocean of liquid. Now take that same body, the same ocean, and surround the floating body with an enclosure that does not touch the body. It is still floating, it doesn't know that it has been surrounded by the "cup". Take the rest of the ocean away, the body is still floating in the cup. If you made the "cup" close enough to the body, you can reduce the volume of liquid to what ever you want (within limits of not going to the atomic scale), and the body is still floating. THe cup however does not need to be the same shape, but it will need to be close, in order to be only x much larger.

Now if you take the body out of the cup, the volume needed to fill the cup to the original level will have the same weight as the body did. [THe "displaced" liquid]

jk

This may Make History.

Don , I apologise.!!! I have seen the errror of my ways and hope I can describe it so anybody else can see the truth.

Without too much formulas. When a body sinks in a constrained vessell it will sink till the imersed volume * the relative density of the liquid is equal to the mass of the inserted object. And since it is constrained the level rises but the imersed volume is what counts not the original volume or mass of available liquid.

Again I am sorry for not understanding earlier.

-- John G

In any pool, if displacement is defined as the "submerged volume "

Actually DOn, I think he was agreeing with you here. Just approaching it from the reverse direction as a way of making it clear At least the way I read his post. jk

Whether it floats at all is a function of both mass and volume, but, yes, given that the object is floating, displacement does depend on mass only.

And likewise.

OK, that's fine. I still want to see a photo.

In the case he presents where the water can overflow, the body must indeed displace its weight in water in order to float.

Wahay, he's got it! I honestly hadn't believed that the concept could be made so complicated :-)

Mark Rand (still wondering if I should make Chris an offer for some of his mercury, what do you want for a flask Chris?)

Demanding, aren't we! OK, go to

I'll be darned.

Might you be trolling a bit here? In the same post you quote from above, I described an actual experiment (and results thereof) that showed my reasoning to be valid. I then wrote in that post, "T'will be interesting to see how you refute it."

I see no refutation with any supporting evidence at all. Smells like troll to me.

My objective here was to understand what's going on. I've now proven that to at least my own satisfaction with two fairly careful experiments that I've documented here, and Ig did a previous experiment with similar findings. That said, I (and probably we) won't mind a bit if you continue to insist that I and we are wrong.

Enjoy yourself!