How do you go about calculating buoyant force?
This is fairly simple. First calculate the amount of fluid displacement of the object, i.e. it would displace 10 cubic feet of fluid if completely submerged. Next, determine the weight of the fluid, i.e. salt water weighs 64 pounds per cubic foot. This can be used to determine the upward or buoyant force exerted on the object by multiplying the displacement by the weight of the fluid. In this example, it is 640 pounds. To determine whether an object will float or sink, simply subtract the weight of the object from the buoyant force. In this example, if the object weighs 200 pounds then the object will float since the 200 pounds of the object is met with 640 pounds of upward water force, so the object weighs 440 pounds in the water (640 – 200 = 440). If the object weighed 640 pounds, then it would be neutrally buoyant in the water and would neither sink nor float and would stay where placed (assuming no water movement, etc.) … and if it weighed more than 640 pounds, then the object wo
