this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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It sank to the bottom
There was no depth where it floated? Interesting.
Water's not compressible, so the density doesn't change with depth. Either the bowling ball is denser than water or less dense than water.
Water is compressible; it has a bulk modulus of about 2.2 GPa. So at the 1086 bar at the bottom of the Mariana trench (~109 MPa), it'll have compressed about (109 / 2200) ~= 5%. Materials with a different bulk modulus to water may start to float at sufficiently high depths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_modulus#Selected_values