Answer:
The answer to why ships can float comes from the famous principle of Archimedes which says that the net upward force on an object immersed in water is equal to the weight of the water displaced by the object. If a large object like a ship is lowered slowly into water, it will displace more and more water until the weight of water displaced equals the weight of the ship, at which point it will stop dropping and “float”. If, of course, the ship is too heavy (say it was filled with too much steel or other heavy stuff) then the weight of water displaced will never equal the ship’s weight and it will never float (it will sink like a stone).
