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Physics Lesson 9.5.1 - What is Buoyancy?
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Welcome to our Physics lesson on What is Buoyancy?, this is the first lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Buoyancy. Archimedes' Principle, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
What is Buoyancy?
Buoyancy is the lifting ability of fluids on objects immersed in them. In this sense, we can define buoyancy as an opposing force to gravity caused by the resistance of fluid against any molecular shift caused by the downward tendency of objects' motion. This resistance comes due to the medium's inertia (here, medium is represented by the fluid). Look at the figure.
In the figure, you can see that the falling object compresses the molecules below it and leaves for the moment empty spaces above it, until these empty spaces refill by other molecules coming from other places. This difference in the density of fluid (i.e. of medium's molecules) produces a resistive effect towards motion through the fluid, which we call buoyancy. Even though the object may continue fall down, we say buoyancy causes a lifting effect because it prevents a quick fall of the object due to gravity.
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- Continuing learning density and pressure - read our next physics tutorial: Bernoulli Equation
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