Captain Ahab
Well-known member
Redbug made a post a few months ago about adding structure to his pond using bowling balls:
Here is what he wrote:
A few evenings ago I took a few old bowling balls to my local lake to add structure - just like Redbug did. To my surprise, the floated.
A little online research (just like Doc Watson does) and I came up with this:
Let's start with some properties of water. How heavy is 8 pounds? It just happens to work out that one gallon of water weighs 8 pounds. Hmmm? Something smells a little fishy because 8 pound bowling balls float. If one gallon of water weighs 8 pounds and an 8 pound bowling ball takes up more space than a gallon of water, the ball will float! What did Archimede say about all of this? When an object is placed in water it will displace it's weight in water. The 8 pound ball is displacing 8 pounds of water. However, the ball also takes up more volume than 8 pounds of water, so it floats. It might be less confusing to simply say the 8 pound ball is less dense than water and the 16 pound ball is more dense than water where density is the mass of the ball divided by its volume. Hey, are you pulling my leg? NO! The bowling balls that we used on television were legitimate, competition-sanctioned bowling balls. For those disbelievers, the water was real, too. We suggest using an 8 pound ball for your less dense ball since it floats fairly high but a 9 pound ball will work just as well. A 10 pound ball will almost "hover" in the water! Anything heavier than 11 pounds will sink.
So, my problem was that the bowling balls must not have weighed more then 11 lbs. (I think they were 10 lb balls!!!!!!)
Anyway, the barely floated but certainly made no bottom structure
Here is what he wrote:
redbug said:Darn I was hoping they were bowling balls I was gonna claim them.
they make great structure . My 1 farm pond has around 75 sitting on the bottom. The local alley is still looking for them. I go in with an empty bag and leave with 3 new additions to my rock pile
Name with held to protect the innocent :lol:
A few evenings ago I took a few old bowling balls to my local lake to add structure - just like Redbug did. To my surprise, the floated.
A little online research (just like Doc Watson does) and I came up with this:
Let's start with some properties of water. How heavy is 8 pounds? It just happens to work out that one gallon of water weighs 8 pounds. Hmmm? Something smells a little fishy because 8 pound bowling balls float. If one gallon of water weighs 8 pounds and an 8 pound bowling ball takes up more space than a gallon of water, the ball will float! What did Archimede say about all of this? When an object is placed in water it will displace it's weight in water. The 8 pound ball is displacing 8 pounds of water. However, the ball also takes up more volume than 8 pounds of water, so it floats. It might be less confusing to simply say the 8 pound ball is less dense than water and the 16 pound ball is more dense than water where density is the mass of the ball divided by its volume. Hey, are you pulling my leg? NO! The bowling balls that we used on television were legitimate, competition-sanctioned bowling balls. For those disbelievers, the water was real, too. We suggest using an 8 pound ball for your less dense ball since it floats fairly high but a 9 pound ball will work just as well. A 10 pound ball will almost "hover" in the water! Anything heavier than 11 pounds will sink.
So, my problem was that the bowling balls must not have weighed more then 11 lbs. (I think they were 10 lb balls!!!!!!)
Anyway, the barely floated but certainly made no bottom structure