The Float-Sink Bet You'll Always Win

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Hey, how about a float sink science bet that you will always win. Seriously, you're always going to win this bet depending on how you play it. Watch.

[00:00:08]Here's what you do. Take an orange and you're going to need a bowl of water and you say to a friend, "Will the orange float or sink?" When you drop it in the water, you can actually control if it floats or sinks. All right, so go ahead, say sink. You're going to lose. Watch this. It floats. Oranges float. Did you know that? So, an orange floats. No problem at all. But what if they say float and you want it to sink? Well, here's what you have to do. Just peel the orange. Now, I did that here with an orange. Same size. I peeled the orange.

[00:00:37]Now, this doesn't make sense at all if you think of it from a scientific perspective. I'm just removing weight.

[00:00:42]If you're removing weight, wouldn't it float even more? Watch this. A peeled orange in the water and it sinks. A regular orange floats. The peeled orange sinks. Why is that? That's right. The peel itself gave it some buoyancy.

[00:00:58]They're little tiny pockets of air in that peel that you've pulled off. So consider them like little uh uh floaties. You know what you would have in a swimming pool, right? For a kid, consider surrounded by it. It gives it now uh buoyancy and it floats. So if you want it to sink, you know what to do. If you want it to float, you know what to do. And you'll win the challenge every time. You know why you like that?

[00:01:19]Because it had a peel. I didn't write that. I'm Steve Spangler and that's your floating sinking science minute.

[00:01:25]Seriously, I didn't write that.