Finding the Percentage of a Sphere Immersed in Water

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Homework Help Overview

The discussion revolves around determining the percentage of a sphere that is submerged in water, a topic related to buoyancy and fluid mechanics in a general physics context.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Conceptual clarification, Assumption checking

Approaches and Questions Raised

  • Participants explore the relationship between buoyancy and density, with some suggesting to consider known scenarios, such as ice floating, to draw parallels. Questions arise regarding the completeness of free body diagrams and the role of different forces and densities in the analysis.

Discussion Status

Participants are actively engaging with the problem, questioning the connections between buoyant force and density, and discussing the adequacy of their free body diagrams. There is an exploration of how to incorporate multiple densities into their reasoning.

Contextual Notes

Participants are navigating the constraints of the problem, including the requirement to draw a free body diagram and the need to relate different densities to the buoyant force.

kswoff
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So I'm in a general physics class and the teacher asked us to find the percentage of a sphere immerses in water and I can't seem to figure out how to find the percentage. I was wondering if there's an equation to use or what to find the answer. Thanks.
 
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Welcome to PF.
When you get stuck like this, try thinking of a similar situation you do know the answer to.

Hint: you know ice floats approximately 90% submerged? (nine-tenths)

What is the density of ice divided by the density of liquid water?
What is that as a percentage?
 
Okay that makes sense. In this same question, it asks to draw a free body diagram to find all the forces. I only found the buoyant force and the gravity force and those don't allow me to have two densities. So did I do the FBD wrong and I'm missing some forces or do I rearrange archimedes' principle to substitute another density? Hope this makes sense.
 
Is the buoyant force related to the densities?
 
I'm assuming so that way I can solve for the percentage.
 
So if you have a buoyant force in your free body diagram, that accounts for the two densities right?
 

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