Floating Yen

Since my trip to Japan the one Yen coin has fascinated me. It’s surprisingly light even though it’s about as big as an American penny. It weighs about as much as half a dime yet its about twice as big as a dime. It has a large volume for such a small weight. Therefore when it is placed on the surface of the water with most of its volume submerged, it floats. The volume of the piece submerged is great enough so the force of the water pushing up on the 1 yen is equal to the force of weight pushing it down. Another interesting fact about the one yen coin is that it only floats because of surface tension. Without surface tension the one yen sinks to the bottom, which means the force of surface tension is fairly greater than the force of the underlying water up to a certain point.

Thanks for reading, Mark.