The answer
August 4, 2008
By the way, the answer to the July 23rd problem is C., remains the same. Archimedes’ principle states that the buoyant (upward) force on an object submerged in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object. The key to this problem is in remembering that about 10 percent of the volume of the ice remains above the surface of the water. As the mass of the water in an ice cube is not dependent on its phase (but the volume is), it can only displace a mass of water equivalent to its own total mass–and the remainder of the volume occupied by the less-dense ice must remain above the surface. Tricky, no?
