I once read that if you were in a boat and dropped a cannonball into the water, the water level would actually go down. It had to do with mass and displacement. Please explain in layman’s terms. — MJB, Lafayette, LA
While the cannonball is in your boat, its great weight pushes the boat deeper into the water. To support the cannonball, the boat must displace the cannonball’s weight in water—a result known as Archimedes principle. Since the cannonball is very dense, the boat must displace perhaps 8 cannonball volumes of water in order to obtain the buoyancy needed to support the cannonball. This displaced water appears on the surface of the lake so that the lake’s level rises.
Now suppose that you throw the cannonball overboard. The cannonball quickly sinks to the bottom. The boat now floats higher than before because it no longer needs to displaces the extra 8 cannonball volumes of water. Although the cannonball itself is displacing 1 cannonball volume of water, there are still 7 cannonball volumes less water being displaced by objects in the water. As a result, the water level of the lake drops slightly when you throw the cannonball overboard.