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How do stone statues float in water?

Q: How do 7.5 Kg GOD statues float in water? Isn't that a miracle?

https://english.newstracklive.com/news/dewas-news-stone-statue-weig...

Krishna: How does a ship weighing 657,019 tonnes (1) float in water? Or the one that weighs 600,000 tonnes(2)?

When such big ships float in water why can't a stone weighing 7.5 Kg float. There is a trick to do that.

Do you remember Archimedes principle (physical law of buoyancy) studied in school?

A body at rest in a fluid is acted upon by a force pushing upward called the buoyant force, which is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces. If the body is completely submerged, the volume of fluid displaced is equal to the volume of the body.

Gravity pulls everything downwards, including floating
objects and water
• The material with the greater density (weight per
size) ends up on the bottom.
• You can change the shape of an object, trapping air
pockets to make it have a density less than water.
This will allow even a large, heavy object like an iron
ship to float! (6)

Buoyancy

The weight of a ship acts through the ship's centre of gravity (G). It is counteracted by buoyancy—the force of displaced water—which acts upward through a centre of buoyancy (B). When a ship is upright (left), the forces are in direct opposition. When the ship heels (right), B shifts to the low side. Buoyancy then acts through the metacentre (M), a point on the ship's centreline above G (3).

This video explains it in detail

How do some stones float in water?

Common knowledge holds that rocks sink in water rather than float. The reason for this consistent characteristic involves scientific principles such as volume, buoyancy and density. Rocks are generally denser than water, and that difference in density makes it categorically impossible to be buoyant.

However, some rocks can float on water for years at a time. And scientists know how they do it, and what causes them to eventually sink.

Pumice is created when super-heated, highly pressurized rock is violently ejected from a volcano. The unusual foamy configuration of pumice happens because of simultaneous rapid cooling (because of the water in oceans) and rapid depressurization. The depressurization creates bubbles by lowering the solubility of gases (including water and CO2) that are dissolved in the lava, causing the gases to rapidly exsolve (like the bubbles of CO2 that appear when a carbonated drink is opened). The simultaneous cooling and depressurization freeze the bubbles in a matrix. Eruptions under water are rapidly cooled and the large volume of pumice stones are created (4).

Scientists know that pumice can float in water because of pockets of gas in its pores.

Pumice stone

Another rock that can float is scoria. This is another rock formed from a volcanic eruption. It is generally denser than pumice and sinks with ease. However, the occasional scoria rock may float for a short period of time. This rare scoria will have air pockets that are larger than those in pumice stones, potentially big enough to compensate for the stone's weight (9).

Bricks used for Ramappa temple also floats in water (5).

A small, heavy object has higher density than a large light object. Lego bricks have many air bubbles trapped inside them. The density of the brick with all those bubbles is less than that of water – so the bricks float, no matter how many of them you stick together (6).

Light weight floating bricks are made of fly ash, rice husk ash, foaming agent and cement (7).

There is a statue in Nepal that floats because it was made in the shape of a ship (8). Lord Vishnu Idol Which Floats On Water is not a miracle. It is science.

This statue is made of basalt stone. Basalts are common aphanitic igneous extrusive (volcanic) rocks. Basalts are composed of minute grains of plagioclase feldspar (generally labradorite), pyroxene, olivine, biotite, hornblende and <20% quartz.

Can basalt float on water?

If there's enough air trapped, the volcanic rock *could* float on water.

There are other ways too to make rocks float in water.

Increase the water's density by freezing the water; as water gets colder, its density escalates. You can easily place a rock on top of ice, which is definitely water, and observe that it does not sink (9).

Alternatively, add salt to water. It can take some time to figure out exactly how much salt will be needed to increase density enough for a rock to float (9).

I have seen the video to which you gave the link. The statue is completely covered in the video and we cannot make out anything. If these people allow us to check things scientifically, we can explain it in detail. But I think they are using one of the above scientific principles I explained to make the statue float.

There are no miracles science can't explain, if you allow it to do so that is.

Footnotes:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawise_Giant

2. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/10496977...

3. https://www.britannica.com/science/Archimedes-principle

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice#:~:text=It%20forms%20when%20vo....

5. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/destinations/bricks-that...

6. http://koslover.ucsd.edu/YSC/floatsink_worksheet.pdf

7. https://www.entrepreneurindia.co/blog-description/10334/the+new+age...

8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4-4cUm1yFA

9. https://sciencing.com/make-rock-float-water-11415152.html

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