Abstract
It is well known that the surface tension forces can make a particle denser than water float when the size of the particle is of the order of 1 mm. This is deeply related to the basic mechanism enabling small insects to wander around on the pond surface and also to a newly emerging technology of self-assembly using capillary forces. For the quantitative understanding of this effect, we experimentally study the maximum density of a cylinder that can float on water and how fast the cylinder sinks when the density exceeds the maximum value. We compare our experimental results with the theoretical prediction and find good agreement between them.
