A bizarre application of Archimedes’ law

Abstract

We describe an experimental set-up that is very easy to construct but which produces an unusual phenomenon which verifies Archimedes' law for gas.

A simplified description of bodies floating in the water

“…where m air is the mass of air within the container, m water is the mass of water, and m walls is the mass of its walls. According to Archimedes' principle, the buoyant force is an upward force that a body immersed in a fluid experiences, and is given by the weight of the fluid displaced by the body [3]. The volume of displaced fluid (water in this case) corresponds to the volume of the container that is submerged.…”

“…For a vertical cylinder (or other symmetric solid body), by symmetry, the horizontal component of the resultant of forces on the body is null, and the vertical component is directed upward and is named as buoyant force of the fluid on the body and this phenomenon constitutes the Archimedes' principle (287-212 B.C.) [1][2][3][4][5]. For a more general case of a body with an arbitrary shape we can also mathematically demonstrate that the horizontal component of the resultant is null, remaining only the vertical component [6].…”