Buoyancy for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXL

Buoyancy: how things float

So, the newbie staffer logged into the morning meeting and immediately chirped that they'd found the perfect candidate in just one sentence. Several of us who were already Zoomed in chuckled and allowed as to how that's not all that rare, especially when a freelancer with an English (or "communications") BA tries to reword something even slightly technical. Since this was their first nomination, though, we agreed to listen... and darned if the kid wasn't spot on. Without further ado, then, here's a sendup of multiple award winner Megan Shoop and her attempt to explain "How to Make Things Float in Water" for Sciencing.com.

Megan's been here before (four times, to be exact) and – despite having avoided STEM topics to acquire a a BA in English Literature – appeared to consider herself a techno-scientific whiz. We're here to say, "No, Megan, that's not the case." It was pretty obvious to our staffer from her opening statement in on the topic of floating:

"Objects float when the volume of water they displace is less than the volume of the objects themselves."

Apparently in need of a deeper hole in which to bury her scientific ignorance, Megan continued by explaining that,

"When objects sink, the volume of water they displace is greater than the volume of the object."

Well, no, Megan, an object will float if the mass of water they displace is greater than their mass. Short of a surrounding themselves with a force field of some sort, we know of no way for an object to displace a volume of water larger than their own volume. Or, for that matter, for a sunken object to displace a volume of water that is less than its own volume. Shoop's assertion otherwise suggests that she simply did not know the definition of the word "volume." So much for that college degree!

Unfortunately the folks at eHow.com (original home of this dreck) required that Megan pad her content out to 300-500 words, a scary notion for scientific literates everywhere. Shoop did so by proposing a series of "experiments" in buoyancy, the most bizarre of consisted of,

"Mold and knead [a] clay ball into a small clay bowl. It should now float because the surface tension of the water prevents the clay bowl from displacing as much water as the clay ball did."

Once again, Shoop's inability to understand even rudimentary "science-y words" failed her. Even if a clay bowl did not simply dissolve in the water, it is not "surface tension" that allows such a shape to float, it is buoyancy: a container of this shape displaces a volume of water that masses more than the weight of the clay. Surface tension might allow a flat object with a very high surface area to mass ratio to rest on the surface of still water, but that is not "floating."

This is just one more time that scientific illiteracy exposes a freelancing Dumbass of the Day with a liberal arts degree. In this case, we have such a freelancer who's receiving her fifth award from our staff for her inability to understand STEM topics. Feh.

SI - PHYSICS