Image from Science, Vol. 298, 1 November 2002, p. 967.
On Aluminum Boats!
I. Introduction: One of the major inventions of all time was the boat. Archimedes wrote
about boats in his book entitled On Floating Bodies. Archimedes realized that the mass
that a boat could handle was equal to the mass of the water displaced. We will attempt to
test this idea known as Archimedes’ Principle.
II. Experiment: You will make an aluminum boat with a flat bottom. You will measure
and record the width, length, and height of the boat in centimeters (cm). You will float
your boat in water and will carefully add pennies until the boat sinks.
The volume of the boat will represent the volume of the water displaced. The mass added
to the boat is known from the number of pennies since each penny has the same mass. If
Archimedes was correct, then:
(Number of Pennies)  (Volume of the Boat) = (Density of Water)
Length  Width  Height = Volume
Mass  Volume = Density