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Comment by thehappypm

2 years ago

Some rubber is less dense than water, and certainly the type in a rubbery ducky would be

FWIW those bathtub ducks are made of vinyl, not rubber, but more to the point given that it's hollow it's not the density of the material that determines whether it floats. A steel aircraft carrier floats too.

  • Perhaps today they’re vinyl, mostly, but the AI wasn’t wrong in saying that if the duck was made of rubber it’d be less dense than water

    • The density of rubber would only be a factor if it was solid, not hollow, and then it'd depend on what kind of rubber. Most rubber is in fact more dense than water (per googling density of rubber).

      The fact that it squeaks when squeezed, as well as common knowledge about bath ducks, tells you it's hollow, therefore the density of the material it is made of would be the wrong way to determine it it would float. It's the average density of the entire duck that matters (i.e. weight of duck vs weight of water displaced by duck's volume).

Modern 'rubber ducks' similar to the one in the picture aren't even made out of rubber but plastic. They get called rubber ducks because they were make of rubber when invented in the late 1800s. Amazing what you can learn on Wikipedia.