In Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl How Did Jack and Turner Have No Water When Under the Boat — What Is the Science?
Aye, and a rye parlay only a scallywag, or perhaps, a mathematician would think of…
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) parrots the pirate life to the watery dimension — and Captain Jack Sparrow conniving with Pirate Bootstrap Bill Turner’s son, Will. Into pirating back Sparrow’s ship, The Black Pearl.
But to reclaim it, Sparrow and his accomplice Turner must first traverse an ocean floor with a capsized boat sheltering their respective heads. As they share a conversation before they will commandeer and use a British Royal Naval ship as a distraction, so Sparrow can switch vessels and again sail his beloved Pearl…
The swashbucklers chat and cross the watery ocean floor carrying a upside-down boat over their heads, with the help of a force called, buoyancy.
What is buoyancy?
Buoyancy is a force that’s undetectable to the human eye and causes objects to “float”.
In Curse of the Black Pearl, buoyancy is the upward force applied by a fluid on an object (the capsized boat Turner and Sparrow use).
Sparrow’s mutineer and rival Captain Hector Barbossa would’ve loved hearing Ol’ Jacky had wound up at the bottom of an ocean floor. Except that the upward force by that seawater actually opposed the weight of the upturned boat used by Sparrow and Turner. Resulting in a pocket of air that was formed when the fluid was displaced.
The Force of Buoyancy is a constant equal, therefore, to the weight or the amount of displaced liquid.
Why do objects — like Will and Sparrow’s boat float in water?
Let’s look to the science:
◾ As long as an object weighs less than the fluid it’s in, it won’t sink.
◾ The place where the point of buoyancy acts upon an object is the Center of Buoyancy.
It’s a vertical force on the displaced liquid’s center of gravity once an object is submerged.
And the second piece in resolving the puzzle of how Jack and Will Turner could cross a sandy ocean bed.
Another piece to buoyancy’s role in the movies
But there’s a third piece to this underwater puzzle: the upward force, Upthrust, (versus downthrust), that occurs when force is exerted on a partially or fully submerged object in a liquid. Again, making an object appear to lose weight.
If Sparrow and Turner’s submerged boat had weighed greater than the seawater? It would’ve sunk and taken Jack Sparrow and Bootstrap’s son, Turner with it.
The force of buoyancy defined
Buoyant force depends on:
- The amount (or volume) of the object immersed being equal to the amount of liquid displaced, and
- The actual density of the fluid.
Thus, in Pirates of the Caribbean, the force of buoyancy features a trinary-supporting role as positive, negative and neutral buoyancy (and especially, if you’re into its mathematical Pop, Archimedes):
- It appears as Positive buoyancy when the immersed object is lighter than the liquid or fluid it displaces: Why Sparrow’s ship, The Pearl floats.
- Next, it surfaces as ‘a herring’, if Negative buoyancy had occurred, and the immersed object was heavier (denser) than the liquid displaced: Is how the boat Jack and Will used could have sank (and, if no other outward influences arose, such as the Kraken [in Pirates of the Caribbean Franchise’s second installment Dead Man’s Chest] or a naval contingent).
- While it has a starring theme as Neutral buoyancy, by seeing to it that the weight of any partially-immersed object: the instances of seafaring ships maintaining their sea legs, stays equal to the fluid they’ve displaced.
Buoyancy, Jack Sparrow, Will Turner and the pirate’s life
The three types of buoyancy: positive, negative and neutral buoyancy help these scallywags journey the pirate’s life.
With buoyancy as the starring force keeping Jack Sparrow — and Pirate in the Rye, William Turner afloat, and alive — both under and above the Disney waters.
Nay ye be affright of any destiny befalling…Pirates.
[Any images or derivative visuals relating to Disney and its subsidiaries are for the express use of illustrative purposes solely.]
