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Floating and Sinking

It’s density that allows oil, waka, ships and icebergs to float on water whereas rocks and anchors sink. Included are resources on salinity, swimming, lifejackets, submarines, the Archimedes principle and buoyancy experiments. SCIS no. 1867886

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Icebergs are thick masses of ice floating in the ocean. They form when large chunks of ice break off a glacier or an ice shelf and float free in the sea. This is called calving. Many new icebergs w...

Floating fern

Two species of small, floating fern are found in New Zealand: the native Azolla filiculoides, pictured here, and a tropical introduction, A. pinnata. They form spreading, red-green mats on the surf...

Physical World – Floating and sinking

Below are links to Science Learning Hub resources for primary teachers related to floating and sinking in the Physical World strand of the New Zealand Curriculum.

A FLOATING HOTEL. (Clutha Leader 17-4-1908)

A FLOATING HOTEL. (Clutha Leader 17-4-1908)

Argo floats rise and sink

Control over buoyancy to make an Argo float rise or sink.

Message in a bottle

Bottle with a message in it found after 108 years.

Inflation

Painting called ‘Inflation – a floating balloon’.

Memorial to Samuel Plimsoll who created the Plimsoll mark for ships.

Leaving a sinking ship

Leaving a sinking ship

Jim Bolger in an inflated ring leaving a sinking ship called British Systems.

SS Lusitania

Copy of a letter about the sinking of the Lusitania.

Mud sinking scare

Mud sinking scare

Woman and her dog rescued from sinking in waist-deep mud.

How to tell the age of an egg.

A sinking ship

Reasons why a sinking ship reaches the seabed.

Floating buoyancy

Floating buoyancy of an all-metal aircraft.

Submarine fibre optics

Submarine fibre optics

Fibre optic cables are sunk into the seabed.

First British submarine

First British submarine

Submarines can float and sink.

Hovercraft

Two Kiwi inventors talk about their hovercraft.

Water lilies

Water lilies use flat leaf surfaces to float on water.

Rena oil on water

Rena oil on water

Poem and image about the oil and containers from the Rena shipwreck.

Sinkholes

What causes sinkholes?

Life jacket

A life jacket padded with fluff from the inside of the seeds of the kapok tree.

Swimmers and swimming

Early 1893 newspaper article on surfing.

Marshall family

Marshall family

The Marshall family swimming.

Water density and why ice floats on water.

Sooty Shearwater

Sooty Shearwater

Seabirds floating on the sea off Kaikoura.

Blocks of pumice

Blocks of pumice

Pumice is a volcanic rock so light that it floats, and large blocks can be easily lifted. It occurs mainly in the central North Island, but because it floats it can be found around the New Zealand ...

Coconut

A coconut floating in the sea.

Mōkihi

A mōkihi is a Māori raft made from raupo and flax.

Sinking the Wellington

Sinking the Wellington

In 2005, the former Royal New Zealand Navy frigate Wellington was sunk off Wellington’s south coast.

Wahine sinks

A ship is very heavy but its hollow shape helps it to stay afloat. In addition, there are many open spaces on a ship, which are filled with air. This air on the ship is less dense than water. This ...

Floating in the Dead Sea

Floating in the Dead Sea

Here are 36 New Zealand Survey Battery members floating in the Dead Sea.

Anchor

Anchors are very heavy objects that are used to keep or moor a ship to the bottom of the sea to stop it from drifting away. One end of the anchor has a chain, which is attached to the ship. Anchors...

Clouds floating in the sky

Clouds floating in the sky

Clouds are made of water and yet they appear to float in the sky. This is because they are made up of millions of tiny droplets of water covering a very large surface area. As long as the cloud (an...

Floating dock

In this photograph, Wellington’s Jubilee floating dock is towed to Aotea Quay by the tugboats Kupe, Toia and Ngahue.

Floating cape

The term ‘floating’ does not always relate to science as this fashionable image reveals.

Floating mines

This article is from just after World War I. At that time, some parts of the world's oceans still had mines floating in them. These floating mines were explosive devices designed to damage or destr...

Giant iceberg

Passengers on board the liner Octavia in 1911 were lucky to see a 500-foot high giant iceberg on their voyage to Liverpool via the South Atlantic Ocean.

Computer generated imagery shows how the Titanic sank to the bottom of the sea.

Investigating science through floating and sinking.

Lesson plan to test floating and sinking, Archimedes principle, density and buoyancy.

Archimedes’ Principle

Calculating the weight of a horse using Archimedes principle.

Contrasting student and scientific views

Student view and scientific view of why things float or sink.

Floating and sinking

Experiments on floating and sinking for primary school.

All about sinking and floating

Simple facts and experiments about sinking and floating.

How do boats float?

Why and how do boats float?

Sinking and floating facts

Facts about sinking and floating.

Sesame Street on theories about floating and sinking.

Does it sink? Does it float?

A poem on buoyancy.

Experiment on oil spills and why they are bad for our environment.

The sunken city

Myth about Atlantis, the city that sank into the ocean.

Why do things float?

Buoyancy depends on weight and pressure.

The Earth’s crust

The crust of the Earth floats on the mantle.

Buoyancy and density

Types of buoyancy, density, fluids and Archimedes principle.

Bill Hamilton’s jet-boat invention changed river and shallow water navigation.

The Plimsoll line or the international load line for cargo ships.

Thailand’s festival about artistic floats and floating lanterns.

How does a lava lamp work?

Clouds floating

A weather man explains how clouds float.

How submarines dive and surface to float on the ocean.

Buoyancy makes hot-air balloons and blimps fly.

Floating plant varieties

Some plants that float on water.

Dead Sea floating...a demonstration.

What do children think about it?

Claims, evidence and reasoning why things float and sink.

Why do icebergs float?

Astronauts float in space

The reason why astronauts float in space.

The reason why life jackets help save you from drowning.

Why does ice float?

What makes ice float instead of sinking?

Balloon Buoyancy

What makes a balloon float?

Wahine disaster

The Wellington ferry Wahineran aground and sank at the entrance to Wellington Harbour in 1968.

Why do heavy rain clouds float in the air?

Floating icebergs

An iceberg floating off the Otago coastline.

Temperature, salinity and water density

An activity to demonstrate how temperature and salinity can determine floating or sinking.