Talk:Archimedes paradox

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l.aditya,

I've read your contribution to the Archimedes Paradox article (paragraph entitled "Caution") and it doesn't make sense in the general context of the article. You talk about a "spaceship" for one which has nothing to do with a ship floating in water. Secondly, you bring up a valid point that the weight of a ship plus the water must be supported by something, which is true, but I do not believe this has any bearing on the central issue, which is the relative density of the two substances (ship and water).

You conclude that the paradox is nothing more than a play on words, which I do not feel is a natural conclusion to your preceding argument.

Grahamrichter 12:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Graham

the text clearly says "One extreme application of the paradox is that a battleship can float in only a few litres of water, provided that the water surrounds the hull completely and that the ship would have floated had it been in open water." What is meant by float?. The language as it currently stands implies that igiven a battleship and sufficient water, there would be no more support needed for it to "float". But any free body diagram would illustrate that there is a further need to support the combined weight of the two. Hence the caution.

I.aditya 03:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)Aditya

Not true at all - this is the entire point of the paradox. The few litres of water has to be in the shape it would be normally in contact with the battleship - in effect, you would need a battleship-shaped trough - but that few litres of water *is* all you need. Your assumption that the water is in other water circumvents the paradox; if you make that assumption, then the paradox is invalid. But then you are also removing the initial condition of the paradox, which is that you only need the few litres of water. --Firien § 11:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Battleship floting on A FEW LITERS of water?

I replaced this gross exaggeration with "a relatively small volume of water".

As discussed in the external link, a battleship floating on a gallon of water (about 3 liters) would spread this volume to a third of a micrometer thin -- less than the size of a bacterium -- which is clearly not even theoretically feaseable, due to vibrations and imperfections on the hull and container surfaces.

It would be necessary at least some thousands of liters to get even a milimeter thick layer of water, which would be still a stretch. To get to a sizeable fraction of a meter, to make it actually possible, would take anything from hundreds of thousands to more than a million liters.

Hey, but under laboratory conditions, we almost always exploit this phenomenon to measure relavtive density. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.192.0.44 (talk) 10:26, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

meow —Preceding unsigned comment added by ReluctantPhilosopher (talk • contribs) 13:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)