163
votes
Can ants walk on liquid mercury?
Needing any excuse to break away from the work I was doing, I immediately assumed the task of answering this question.
Yes, ants can walk on mercury with no trouble at all. I bet it was even kind of ...
- 471
137
votes
Do the weights of two liquids not add when mixed?
Of course, by common sense, if you put together two objects with masses $m_1$ and $m_2$, and nothing comes out, then you end up with mass $m_1 + m_2$.
Weights are a little more complicated because ...
- 105k
95
votes
Why does carbon dioxide not sink in air if other dense gases do?
Gases are all miscible. If initially separate and adjacent, they do not mix instantly, but once mixed (a process that occurs by molecular diffusion and is accelerated by macroscopic stirring or ...
- 4,059
91
votes
Accepted
Why does a floating object displace more substance than a sunk object?
When submerged, the coin displaces as much water as it has volume (logical).
When floating on the box, the coin displaces as much water as corresponds to its weight.
As metal has a higher density than ...
- 1,031
86
votes
Given that ice is less dense than water, why doesn't it sit completely atop water (rather than slightly submerged)?
When put in water, an objects sinks to the point where the volume of water it displaces has the same weight as the object. Archimedes was the one who discovered this.
When you put lead in water, the ...
- 11.2k
81
votes
How is water heavier than petrol, even though its molecular weight is less than petrol?
Density relates to the mass per unit volume. If your molecules are heavier but take up more space, the net result could be more or less mass per unit volume.
When you look at a typical hydrocarbon, ...
- 119k
80
votes
Accepted
How is water heavier than petrol, even though its molecular weight is less than petrol?
Because water molecules are small and pack tightly together, causing water to have a greater density than petrol.
- 52.2k
79
votes
Accepted
Why does sound not move through a wall?
Sound doesn't go through walls? Please tell my neighbor.
In electromagnetism, a medium has a property called an "impedance" which is related to the index of refraction and the speed of waves in the ...
rob♦
- 94.2k
67
votes
Does the amount of oxygen in air, actually get lower as you go to higher altitudes?
For elevations less than about 100 km (for reference, the peak of Mt. Everest is about 8.8 km above sea level), the relative concentration of oxygen in the air is fairly constant at about 21%.
Source
...
- 71.5k
61
votes
Accepted
Can ants walk on liquid mercury?
Whether or not a small animal/insect can walk on a liquid is determined much more by surface tension than by density. To see why this is consider a dense liquid without any surface tension. You would ...
- 1,036
59
votes
Accepted
Why do rotten eggs float in water?
The domestic chicken's egg shell has about 7000 pores that allow the embryo to breathe. When an egg rots the yolk and surrounding materials decompose and they give off gasses which can pass through ...
- 8,541
53
votes
Given that ice is less dense than water, why doesn't it sit completely atop water (rather than slightly submerged)?
I like to answer by reinterpreting your question: if you expect the ice to be completely atop the water because ice is less dense than water (as indicated in your left image), then you would also ...
- 691
52
votes
Will a penny ever stand still in the water at a certain depth?
The answer is no. Water, being a liquid, is nearly incompressible, meaning that the density changes very little with increasing pressure. In the very deep ocean, the pressure can approach $10^{8}$ ...
Buzz♦
- 17.1k
49
votes
Is there anything in the universe that cannot be compressed?
Under special relativity nothing can be incompressible: consider any object of nonzero size and finite mass in its rest frame; when you apply a force to it on one side it will start moving. If it were ...
- 9,444
45
votes
Are there physical properties that can be used to differentiate stainless steel from copper in a home environment?
Take advantage of the large difference in thermal conductivity between copper and stainless steel (approximately $400$ and $16$ $\mathrm{Wm^{-1}K^{-1}}$ respectively). If you put one end of a metal ...
- 6,205
43
votes
Accepted
Why does air pressure decrease with altitude?
The air pressure at a given point is the weight of the column of air directly above that point, as explained here. As altitude increases, this column becomes smaller, so it has less weight. Thus, ...
- 5,496
42
votes
Material which becomes less dense as pressure is applied
Becoming less dense with pressure is an energy-producing
quality; mass being conserved, volume must increase as pressure
rises for density (mass/volume) to have that response. So, I'd say
that ...
- 10.2k
39
votes
Accepted
Why does the speed of sound decrease at high altitudes although the air density decreases?
Wikipedia gives a pretty much straightforward answer. In an ideal gas, the speed of sound depends only on the temperature:
$$ v = \sqrt{\frac{\gamma \cdot k \cdot T}{m}} $$
So it neither decreases, ...
- 14.9k
34
votes
Accepted
Is there anything in the universe that cannot be compressed?
In quantum field theory, an elementary particle doesn't have one precise location and size in space. The quantum of an electron field in free space has different extent compared to the electron around ...
- 6,389
34
votes
Will a penny ever stand still in the water at a certain depth?
Yes, it will, but in a different way than one might imagine. In the Earth's oceans it is definitely impossible.
From the phase diagram of water, one can see that assuming a constant temperature of 300 ...
- 1,034
33
votes
Why do rotten eggs float in water?
It doesn't need to be rotten. When the egg is getting old, it evaporate water and looses mass while drying. Even if not rotten.
- 659
33
votes
Accepted
Is air less dense than chimney exhaust?
The question that you are quoting is a very poor question, since the answer depends on what is being burnt to produce the exhaust from the chimney and how far away from the chimney we measure the ...
- 60.5k
32
votes
Do the weights of two liquids not add when mixed?
@knzhou supplied a good answer. I’m going to offer a couple of other interpretations.
The first has nothing to do with the fact that you’re mixing liquids—it’s just that there are difficulties in ...
- 9,805
31
votes
Given that ice is less dense than water, why doesn't it sit completely atop water (rather than slightly submerged)?
I think the real question you're asking here is: why do less-dense fluids completely stay above more dense fluids, whereas less-dense solids partly sink?
If the ice covered the same area as the water ...
- 15k
31
votes
Are there physical properties that can be used to differentiate stainless steel from copper in a home environment?
Why not density? At least for a quick check and as for the title question. You are dealing with about < 8 and 9 g per cubic cm, respectively for steel and copper.
Not overly laborious and ...
- 1,729
27
votes
Accepted
Why is the kinetic energy of a fluid given as an integral?
The kinetic energy of a fluid is the same as normal mechanics, $T=mv^2/2$. However, that's not generally useful as we don't usually have masses but densities, so we instead consider the kinetic energy ...
- 28.8k
26
votes
Accepted
Why was the metal lead used in the Cavendish experiment?
Because of its high density. This meant that, for given masses of spheres, the centres of a fixed sphere and its neighbouring moving sphere could be closer to each other (than if a less dense material ...
- 36.6k
24
votes
Which weighs more in atmosphere, $1\,{\rm kg}$ of steel or $1\,{\rm kg}$ of feathers?
Feathers are made from keratin, with a density of about $1.3\ \mathrm{g/cm^3}$. The net volume displaced by a kilogram of feathers is then $751\ \mathrm{cm^3}$. Steel has a density of $7.86\ \mathrm{g/...
- 97.8k
23
votes
Accepted
Why does a helium balloon rise?
The buoyant force* depends on the volume of the object (or at least the volume of the object submerged in the fluid) and the density of the fluid that object is in, not necessarily/directly on the ...
- 58.6k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible