Forces in Fluids

Abstract Swimming pools for physical therapy was researched and modeled by a submerged mass hanging from a spring. The buoyant force on the submerged mass was determined when the mass was varied and when the volume submerged was varied. The volume of the submerged mass was found to be directly correlated to the buoyant force Introduction A sports medicine group is researching physical therapy applications of swimming pools. This is because the buoyant force causes a feeling of reduced weight which is important for injured people since they cant physically exert themselves at a normal level. The researchers are interested in whether the buoyant force depends on the mass of the person submerged in water or the volume of the submerged person. In order to model this situation, metal cylindrical shaped masses were hung from a spring and the spring extension measured when different portions of the mass were submerged in water. Additional measurements of the spring extension were taken also using metal masses of the same size and shape, but different mass. This was done to determine whether the buoyant force was due to the volume or mass of the submerged object. The forces acting on the submerged metal cylinder is the spring force (Fs) , buoyant force (Fb), and the weight of the metal cylinder (W). The Buoyant force will be acting in the same direction as the spring force and opposite the weight. Since this system is at equilibrium, Newtons first + Fb W = 0 Thus, the relation between the spring extension to the submerged volume and weight is, is the spring extension, P0 is the density of water, V is the volume of object submerged, g is the gravitational constant, and K is the spring constant.

Procedure A metal cylindrical mass was attached to a spring and submerged in water as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The model used for this experiment. Fs W is the weight of the metal mass. The spring extension was measured by attaching the metal masses, without submerging them in water, to the spring. This allowed for the spring constant, K, to be determined by dividing the weight of the mass by the spring extension. To determine the effect of mass on the buoyant force, additional mass was added to an initial mass of 50 grams in 20 gram increments while the volume submerged was kept constant. Then the spring extension was measured. To determine the effect of the volume on the buoyant force, the mass was held constant at 100 grams while increasing the portion of the mass submerged in water. Then the spring extension was measured. is the spring force, Fb is the buoyant force, and Data Weight (N) Spring Extension (m) Spring Constant (N/m) 0.490 0.070+/- 0.01 7 +/- 1 0.588 0.095 +/- 0.01 6.19 +/- 0.65 0.686 0.115 +/- 0.01 5.97 +/- 0.52 0.784 0.130 +/- 0.01 6.03 +/- 0.46

0.882 0.145 +/- 0.01 6.08 +/- 0.42 0.980 0.160 +/- 0.01 6.13 +/- 0.38 Average 6.23 +/- 0.57 Table 1: The weight of the masses, spring extensions, and spring constants of 6 trials. Length of non-stretched spring was 0.065 m. The uncertainty for all the spring extensions was 0.01 m. The average spring constant is given as well in N/m.

Analysis The researchers wanted to answer the question of whether the buoyant force was related to the mass of the person submerged or the volume of the person submerged. Experimental buoyancy force given by W-Fs was compared to the theoretical buoyancy. The data gathered indicates that the volume of the person submerged is more important than their mass. This can be seen in Figure 3 since as the weight of the person increases, so does the buoyancy force. In Figure 2 the buoyant force seems to increase with weight as well while the theoretical calculation predicted the buoyant force to stay constant. First, this misleading because there was clearly experimental error and second there was a decrease in buoyant force shortly thereafter. This indicates that despite the deviations from the theoretical calculation, the buoyant force should be constant over a large enough range. Thus, in the future, this experiment could be improved by gathering more data points. Conclusion In order to research the physical therapy applications of swimming pools, a model was constructed that involved hanging a mass from a spring and submerging a portion of it into the water. This was done to determine whether the mass or the volume of the submerged object was more important to the buoyant force. As predicted, the spring extension is related to the weight and volume submerged by the following equation

The volume of the submerged object was found to be related to buoyant force not the mass of the submerged object. For application of physical therapy, different people would require different depths of the pool. In order to determine this depth, the density of the person would have be determined in order to reduce a persons perceived weight by a certain amount.