Yeah, thanks for the reminder, as well as all your hard work.

I just did a rough calculation, an average car tire would probably provide about 116 lbs. of buoyancy, minus the weight of the tire and the wheel. Assuming 20 lbs for the tire, and about 15 for an alloy wheel, that comes out to about 81 lbs, or approximately 320 lbs total for a car. This only accounts for the volume of air inside the tire, it might be more or less depending on the buoyancy of the rubber.

Frederick News Post Stories on the drownings:

3 Drown

Two Boys

I just heard (unconfirmed) the body of one of the boys has been recovered.

Pete

.... and the bouancy of the trapped air within the passenger compartment.

Hmm... that sounds like a calculus related rates problem...

I'll solve this...CARS DON'T FLOAT.

Yes, but the weight of the water on the glass as the depth increases will be much more immediately important than any variations in bouancy brought on by respiration.

I prefer to think of this not so much as a calculus problem, but a phys ed one- can you get the window or door open, and then not die while attempting to swim to shore.

Pete
I could not agree with you more, and nothing makes me madder then haveing to get out of bed at 3am to go get some fool who thought that just becouse they have a 4X4 they can drive through three foot of water. and as for the power of swift water, I have been in the pumper with water as deep as the running bords and you could feel it starting to move the truck ( that will bring out the gold brick in a flash)
Hell I have seen the jet skies that our water rescue team use have trouble going aginst the current.

Cars dont float... but can I make a raft from the tires if I know I need to float and not drive? The four tires and a spare tied together may be enough to keep me or my B-O-B dry...?

I seem to recall from the days we didn't roll grandad's tires into the pond <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> that a fully inflated tire will not suppport the weight of the (steel) wheel that it is mounted on.

I thought the idea was that the bouyancy made cars less stable than their weight would suggest, not that they floated.

People's initution about moving water is often wrong anyway, even without the car's bouyancy thrown in. They sometimes try to cross on foot when they shouldn't even though their legs aren't air-filled rubber.