Staying Afloat: Thinking About Sinking

If you observe floating objects such as a plank, you will notice that they always adopt a particular orientation in water. It is particularly important when designing ship hulls to prevent them from capsizing. This behaviour is controlled by shape and density and lead to fascinating possibilities, many of which are counter-intuitive.

With simple demonstrations, we can explain the intricacies of such a problem and design shapes with particular equilibria, showing how a basic question about floating leads to rich interactions between geometry, mechanics and natural form.