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colas said..CAUTION said..
others have said it and i seem to believe, the balsa seems to make these boards float better than their volume.
i.e. i recon my 94l 7'11 floats more like a 98-100l board. maybe its just a 'feel'
Archimedes is shouting "it is just a feel" while rolling in his grave :-)
I think that Archimedes principle is only part of the equation for talking about how something 'floats'. You need to also consider the density of the material - a board with 100L of volume that is made of lead would have vastly different buoyancy properties than a board with 100L of volume of foam, regardless of the fact that they displace the same volume of water. The difference in behaviour comes from the comparison of that (identical) buoyant force with the weight of the object.
There is an example here of determining how far a raft sinks into the water, which has more relevance to what we are talking about:
www.dummies.com/education/science/physics/understanding-buoyancy-using-archimedess-principle/For my money, it is quite plausible that different boards of the same volume have different floating characteristics due to the materials being used, but due to the pursuit of lighter materials I expect that the difference is probably negligible.
But (and without back peddling on the above), when you add a person into the equation relying on skill/balance/experience, it is probably design/shape that dictates the 'feel' more, like what CAUTION is talking about.
Scott.