Final answer:
A cork submerged in water will float to the surface due to buoyancy, but in free fall, both the cork and water experience weightlessness, causing the cork to not bob to the surface.
Step-by-step explanation:
The behavior of a cork when submerged underwater is related to the principles of buoyancy and Archimedes' principle. In a normal situation, when a cork is placed underwater and released, it bobs up to the surface due to the upward buoyant force being greater than the weight of the cork. However, if the jar of water and the cork are both in free fall, everything inside the jar including the cork would be in a state of weightlessness.
The cork would not bob up to the surface while the jar of water is falling freely because both the water and the cork are accelerating downwards at the same rate (assuming air resistance is negligible), effectively experiencing zero relative gravity, and so the buoyant force that would normally act on the cork does not come into play. This is a concept related to Newton's laws of motion and free-fall conditions.