David Weber Academy

LESSON 1 - Buoyancy, Archimedes Principle

LESSON 1 - Buoyancy, Density, and Flotation on Surfboards

Welcome to Module 2, the Mechanics behind Surfing

We'll cover some of the main mechanics of surfing here and now, and then we'll reconstruct ideas about these and other principles in future lessons.

This is Lesson 1, where you will learn about surfboards Flotation. For this, I will address some concepts, necessary for you to understand 100% how this phenomenon works.

To explain how surfboards float, I'll need to talk about Buoyancy (Buoyant force) . And to explain what Buoyancy is, I will also need to explain to you about Fluids: Archimedes' Principle, Density or Specific Mass, Volume, and connect all these concepts so that you can understand exactly the principles behind buoyancy.

But why study fluids? Because as water is a fluid, and as surfing is carried out in this medium, then we can use these physical and engineering concepts to better understand the mechanics behind surfing.

The study of fluids can be divided into 2 ways: stationary (what we call hydrostatics) and in motion (what we call hydrodynamics)

Thrust is a part of hydrostatics, we first need to understand what happens when everything is at rest, and then better understand what happens when the board moves and interacts with the flow of water, which would be hydrodynamics.

At the end of this class, you will be able to understand all the functioning of the Float of a surfboard, whether it is made of any material. In addition, you will be able to perform calculations to define how many % a board is submerged, buoyancy capacity, impose buoyancy conditions with the weight of the rower, for example to design SUPs.