Floating Stones of Ram Setu Bridge at Rameswaram


It is mentioned in the epic Ramayana that Ram Setu was built by the son of Lord Vishwakarma when Lord Rama needed to cross the sea to reach Lanka. The bridge known as Adam's Bridge is said to be built of floating stones. The epic mentions that whenever the name of Lord Rama was written over any stone, it started to float in the sea water.
Some such stones are said to be scattered at Rameswaram during the Tsunami and one of them was brought to Patna to prove the evidence of Rama and the bridge.

About 4 years back, I was in Rameswaram and in one of the several hundreds of temples, I saw not one, but 12 such stones! They were of various shapes and sizes.



Here is a possible explanation : Before I start, I mention it very clearly that the following explanation, though not verified through thorough experiments, is supported by some of the observations that can be made by watching the video itself and some other experiments I did myself.

Any object when immersed in a liquid would displace some part of the liquid. This is so because when it is immersed in the liquid, it would occupy some of the volume that was earlier occupied by the liquid.
Any object floats in any liquid when the weight of the liquid, displaced by the fraction of the object immersed in the liquid, is equal to the entire weight of the object itself. Thus the fraction of the object immersed in the liquid depends on the relative densities of object and the liquid. For example when ice floats in water, approximately 90% of the volume of ice is immersed in water and only 10% remains outside water.

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