Experiments on buoyancy and surface tension following Galileo Galilei

We analyze passages of Galileo’s writings on aspects of floating. Galileo encountered peculiar effects such as the “floating” of light objects made of dense material and the creation of large drops of water that were difficult to explain because they are related to our current understanding of surface tension. Even though Galileo could not understand the phenomenon, his proposed explanations and experiments are interesting from an educational point of view. We replicate the experiment on water and wine that was described by Galileo in his Two New Sciences.