Question

A piece of wood is floating in a bathtub. A second piece of wood sits on top of the first piece, and does not touch the water. If the top piece is taken off and placed in the water, what happens to the water level in the tub?

Answer 1

The water level remains unchanged when a piece of wood floating on top of another is removed and placed into the water, due to the volume of water displaced being equal to the total weight of both pieces of wood combined.

Step-by-step explanation:

When the top piece of wood is removed from the floating position on the first piece and placed in the water, the water level in the tub will remain the same. This is due to the fact that the bottom piece of wood displaces a volume of water equal to the weight of both pieces of wood. When the second piece is placed in the water, it will displace a volume of water equal to its own weight. Since the weight of the two pieces of wood hasn't changed, the total volume of water displaced remains constant, hence the water level does not change.

This can be understood through the principle of buoyancy, which states that the buoyant force on an object in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object. The removal of the top piece does not alter the amount of water being displaced by the combination of the two pieces when they were together.

Furthermore, the concept of density helps to explain why materials like wood float while more dense materials such as brass would sink when placed in water. Objects with a density lower than that of water will float because they displace a volume of water equal to their weight before being fully submerged.

Answer 2

the water level remains same

Step-by-step explanation:

This can be explained by Archimedes's principle which says that the wood will sink if weight of wood is more than the weight of the water displaced with weight equal to the water displaced otherwise the wood will float.

Therefore, buoyancy or the buoyant force is the same as the weight of wood, the weight of the water displaced by wood is also the same as that of the weight of wood.

Thus, we can see that the weight of the wood remains same and so is the level of water.