Many articles in this journal have detailed the use of smartphone sensors to analyze a wide variety of physical phenomena, from free fall to magnetic field detection to radioactivity.1–3 One aspect that has received less attention is the smartphone barometric sensor, although we did find a few examples of its use to determine the relationship between barometric pressure and elevation.4–6 In this paper we will show an experiment to investigate the pressure exerted by water on a smartphone that was gradually immersed inside a bucket full of water. The experimental setup is composed of three main components: a bucket of water (30 cm deep), a Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone, an iPhone 6, and a waterproof holder to hold the phones.
The phones were sealed in a pliable waterproof holder and immersed slowly into the bucket full of water, where we have recorded the value of the pressure P...