Hello, explorer. Welcome along to a brand new search through the solar system. Let's see what we can find, and it's all about your questions in a brand new science quest. My name is Dan. Around here, we explore the galaxy. We find out what's lurking, what secrets have been hidden, what is waiting to be

discovered, and you can get any question you want answered. All you need to do, make sure you

leave it as a voice note for me on the free Fun Kids app, and at FunKidsLive.com, I will do the

digging and we'll sort it out for you. I love the voice notes because that way you star in the show.

This week we've got questions about buoyancy, burning and things that bug you.

Let's get to it.

First up this week, a question from JJ.

Hi Dan, my name is JJ and I'd like to know how do boats float in water even if they're made of metal.

Thank you. Bye.

Hello, JJ. Thank you so much for that.

Feels strange, doesn't it?

If you drop a thick metal bar into the water, it'll probably sink.

But if you put a massive cruise ship in the ocean with

thousands of tons of steel, well, it floats. Whether an object floats or sinks doesn't depend on

what it's made of, but how much space it takes up compared to its weight. A ship isn't one big block of metal, is it? It's like a giant bowl.

There's lots of air in there and that's really helps it out.

Air is light, it's much less dense than water.

And it's all about buoyancy.

This is something that an old scientist called Archimedes discovered more than 2,000 years ago.

Any object in liquid is pushed upwards by an equal force to the weight of the liquid that it pushes aside.

So there's a lot to get your head around there.

When a boat is in water, gravity pulls the immense mass of the ship downwards and it pushes a lot of water out of the

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