“A body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up with a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid.” So goes a venerable textbook1 statement of the hydrostatic principle that bears Archimedes' name. Archimedes' principle is often proved for the special case of a right-circular cylinder or rectangular solid by considering the difference in hydrostatic forces between the (flat, horizontal) upper and lower surfaces, and then generalized by the even more venerable “it can be shown…” that the principle is in fact true for bodies of arbitrary shape.
REFERENCES
1.
F.W. Sears, Mechanics, Heat and Sound (Addison-Wesley, 1950), p. 316.
2.
G. E.
Jones
and W. P.
Gordon
, “Removing the buoyant force
,” Phys. Teach.
17
, 50
(Jan. 1979
).3.
J. R.
Ray
and E.
Johnson
, “Removing the buoyant force, a follow-up
,” Phys. Teach.
17
, 392
(Sept. 1979
).4.
J.
Bierman
and E.
Kincannon
, “Reconsidering Archimedes' principle
,” Phys. Teach.
41
, 340
(Sept. 2003
).5.
T.L. Heath, ed. The Works of Archimedes (Dover, 2002), pp. 255–259.
This content is only available via PDF.
© 2004 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2004
American Association of Physics Teachers
AAPT members receive access to The Physics Teacher and the American Journal of Physics as a member benefit. To learn more about this member benefit and becoming an AAPT member, visit the Joining AAPT page.