An introduction to Oceanography
 
Discover Oceanography

Floating and Sinking

On this page you can learn all about floating and sinking, and how that relates to the density of solid or liquid. This can be tried in a fun sugar tower experiment! Once you have done the experiment, you can test your knowledge of the science with a quiz about the famous titanic door scene.

Does density matter in real life and outside of the classroom? Yes! You can watch this clip from Titanic below to see the tragic scene of Jack and Rose having to decide that only one person can stay on the door. After this you can go on to use and apply your knowledge of density.

With all of your knowledge, you can now take this quiz to learn not only about the theory of density, but also work out whether Jack could have stayed on the door after all.

 

Try out the experiment below to see how you can not only change the density of liquids, but then you can use this knowledge of density to create an amazing coloured tower.