Originally posted by royalchicken I take a standard bowling ball. I get into a rowboat with the bowling ball and row out into a lake. I then toss the ball overboard. What happens to the water level of the lake?
What about the solution RoyalC ?
Who's going to get the points ?
Originally posted by royalchicken Sometimes, Ivan, it seems you are only interested in scoring points. Why is my authority final? The right explanation's in the post, decide on it 😀
All right: Ivanhoe gets 10 points 😏
You did not want to read everything all over again huh ?
... and by the way ... you remembered that thingy about scoring points ....... 😀
Originally posted by royalchicken Yes, I remembered. Now, to solidify your ten points, why not tell us the right answer?
I have posted it in this thread and I had quite an interesting teasing chat about it with Iamatiger. We even discussed the possibility of taking a balloon instead of a ball with us rowing into the lake ...
Originally posted by ivanhoe I have posted it in this thread and I had quite an interesting teasing chat about it with Iamatiger. We even discussed the possibility of taking a balloon instead of a ball with us rowing into the lake ...
You row to the middle of the lake towing a helium balloon which happens to be tied to your boat. Tiring of the balloon, you take an anchor from the bottom of your boat and and tie the balloon to that. When you throw them in, the anchor turns out to only be heavy enough to pull the exactly half of the balloon's volume under water. Does the level in the lake rise or fall?
Originally posted by iamatiger You row to the middle of the lake towing a helium balloon which happens to be tied to your boat. Tiring of the balloon, you take an anchor from the bottom of your boat and and tie the balloon to that. When you throw them in, the anchor turns out to only be heavy enough to pull the exactly half of the balloon's volume under water. Does the level in the lake rise or fall?
No, because the balloon/anchor combination is floating. You'd have to have a very small anchor or a very big balloon though 😲
Originally posted by Cheshire Cat Just a thought, but it would seem that, being a solid, the ball by definition would have to be denser than water, which as we know is a liquid.
cork, wood, and paraffin are three examples of a solid less dense than water.
lithium is a metal less dense than water, but you can't float it on water! on the other extreme, mercury is much more dense than water--but it is more dense than the bowling ball too (an average bowling ball will float on mercury)!
my intuitve answer to the original problem is that the water level would go down minutely though most likely not measurably.
as an experiment, take a brick and a dishpan in a bathtub, and put enough water in the bathtub to float the dishpan with the brick in it. now remove the brick and drop it to the bottom of the bathtub. i think you'd see a decrease in the water level, but i haven't tried it.
Originally posted by royalchicken Bingo. So when we talk about a ball displacing its mass worth of water (in the boat), and its volume worth (in the water), which is the bigger displacement?
That's two posts for me on the hour, 1&2 am EST. Weird 🙂
why would you waste a good bowling ball in the first place? Or were you not finding the pocket with it?
13 Oct '03 12:231 edit
Bowling for Seabed Grime
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