Summations Only

If I could er... row in here for a minute.

What would happen if the ark, instead of being made along traditional lines, was of woven construction (inspired perhaps by the smaller scale Moses-basket ). Let's suppose the wood used was lightweight and strong too (balsa wood for instance). In this case you tend towards circumventing the OP's structural strength/leaking problems

Structual strength: because the ark is uber flexible. Leaking: because the structure is open and relies on the buoyant nature of the wood itself and not the airspace contained within the hull for floatation.

The open nature of the structure would tend towards solving your waste disposal/ventilation issues too. Passively rather than actively - indicating God's design to err towards the labour saving/eco-friendly.

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So....the Ark just porously floated atop the water? All 3-500ft of it?

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Assuming it's made from a material less dense than water (ie: most woods) then of course it doesn't matter how big it is - it'll float

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With thousands of animals inside?

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Why not? Empty, a woven balsa vessel would barely 'dent' the surface of the water. As you load up it'd sink lower and lower into the water. A point would come when it sinks low enough to submerge the lowest stored animals (because the water level rises inside the ark). At which point you've reach max capacity.

You could improve things by weaving a more open structure above the waterline (to reduce weight) and increase density of weave below the waterline to increase buoyancy (and so increase animal storage capacity).

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Or was half underwater, but still lightweight enough to float so the other half was not underwater?

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As per your typical ship. The point is to address the structural considerations of the OP

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If Noah, some 4000 years ago, was able to build a ship of this magnitude, why did he NOT pass along the knowledge? Why can we not continue to build wooden ships like the Ark? Why are we stuck at the ~300ft mark when he easily surpassed that.......withOUT technology at his side?

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It would have been God-designed and Noah-built. Perhaps God likes us to discover things for ourselves. It's more fun for us that way.

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I'll tell you why: god helped him. Gave him the strength of 600 men. (probably gave him 600 men too in the likes of slaves, which were immediately thrown overboard so as to maintain the "chosen" people

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Maybe he had lots of time instead of lots of man power. A woven structure strikes me as something you can just plug away on without any great need for large engineering works.

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Really? SO how many animals in total are you supposing were aboard this Ark? Given that a good portion of the ship would be submerged due to your crackbrain hypothesis, very little room would be left for the rest of the animals. Unless of course, you suppose very few animals were aboard to begin with. In which case, how are there so many now?

The OP's objection has to do with a vessel this size taking to water and that's what I'm addressing.

It is sufficient, I think, to note that a vessel this size, whose unladen form barely dents the surface of the water, could hold a significant number of (unspecified) animals. Indeed, were the designed-to-be-submerged volume fitted out with balsa wood then buoyancy would be further increased - increasing load carrying capacity still further

This is a science forum. Stick to verifiable facts please.

Like this you mean?

yourself earlier writes: I'll tell you why: god helped him. Gave him the strength of 600 men. (probably gave him 600 men too in the likes of slaves, which were immediately thrown overboard so as to maintain the "chosen" people

hooah writes: SO how many animals in total are you supposing were aboard this Ark?

Just having a second look at this - and correct me if I've calculated wrongly.

The ark dimensons in metres are approx L=156, B=26, D=15. We're assuming construction from a balsa wood weave - in which the submerged volume of the vessle is filled mainly with wood to increase buoyancy. If we assume that the loaded up vessel is 50% submerged then the load carrying calculation would go like this:

Volume of submerged section = 156 x 26 x 7.5m = 30420m3

Assuming the above sumberged volume is 30% water and 70% wood (because the structure is woven and not solid) we have a submerged volume of wood = 30420 x 70% = 21294m3

The weight of that wood would be a function of the density of balsa wood (170kg/m3) which works out at 3619 metrc tonnes.

The buoyancy generated by this amount of submerged wood is the same as it's weight minus x it's relative weight (ie: the same as it's total buoyancy minus the buoyancy required to stop itself from sinking). Thus

(3619 - (.17 x 3619) = 3004 metric tonnes.

The load carrying capacity of this glorified (literally) raft is 3004 metric tonnes divided up into structure above water, animals, food however Noah saw fit

Seems that there'd be room for a fair few animals to me..

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Ok, but to determine where you are coming from, we need to determine how many animals YOU think were aboard the ark.

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I've no idea but the tonnage above allows us to at least suppose there could be many. The OP has to do with wondering about vessel mechanics - not every issue arising out of the ark account.

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Such as, in the event of a storm (assuming it did NOT storm the entire time, which it had to have), are more animals not drowning due to the storm swells? There goes the whole entire bottom deck. Possibly the second, depending on how far below the surface this woven ship is.

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I'm not supposing anything I don't have to suppose. I'm told a large craft took to water and that it rained alot. I only need it to float and stay together sufficiently well on water to last for the duration.

I've supposed half in, half out of the water in the post above. Lets agree that the lowest deck was 6ft above normal water level to provide a margin of comfort and that the hole in the roof was to allow giraffes to stand up and stretch their legs from time to time.

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So a fair few is.....how many? Specifically please. Ok, at least an estimate that is a number. 5? 100? 5000? 100,000?

As I say, this isn't really the concern of the thread. It's about the floatability of a boat.

how do insects not fall through the cracks in this woven monstrosity?

Maybe Noah brought an unwoven box with him?

Noah knew how to weave, WEAVE a ship seaworthy for a year?

It's like knitting, is weaving. It's relative easy and if you just keep going the garment will get bigger and bigger.

And the aim is more float than sea ..worthy

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Go throw a wicker basket on a lake and see if it is still floating after even a week with maybe 1 rainy day.

The weaving isn't whats relevant to floatation, it's buoyancy. If the wicker sinks it isn't buoyant. Lots of woods are.

Not to mention it says cover it with pitch, inside and out. If it is woven, and meant to take on water, why cover it with pitch?

To stop the wood becoming waterlogged and sinking perhaps?

That easy, eh? Gee, how come we haven't thought to build ships like this all along?

Perhaps it's because it takes a lot more wood to build a raft capable of carrying the same load as a hollow hulled boat? Meaning it's cheaper to build a hollow hulled boat. And you get the benefit of increase storage volume (for the same weight carrying capacituy). These are very good reasons to avoid a woven raft.

To say seaworthy, I mean to withstand the obvious weather that created, and sustained, said flood. It has already been proven, by MANY on this forum alone, that it was not a matter of 8 people on a big boat chilling with a BBQ on the 4th of July on a nice calm lake. The WHOLE ENTIRE EARTH BECAME DRENCHED WITH WATER. Not exactly a pleasant sea experience, you think? The physics of it do not allow it. So, yes, your ship most definitely needs to be "seaworthy".

We don't know where the ark was, for how long into the rains before it floated. We don't know how sheltered from wind and rain it was. There's a whole raft (oops) of unknowns about which we could speculate all day.

At least we are far enough to have a simple-enough-to-construct vessel which will float without cracking to bits so as to leak its way to the bottom. Remember ventilation and poo-disposal characteristics too. Not things to be sniffed at.

Do me a favor: take a step away from the bible and into reality for one second and actually think about what you are proposing. A 400+ft boat, WOVEN, SO AS TO TAKE ON WATER, able to withstand 40 days and 40 nights of rain, enough of which to cover all mountains by 15 meters. Tel me with a straight face that seems plausible.......

It's woven because that is a relatively easy structure to construct with basic tools and techniques. It's woven because that offers flexibility. It's woven so that wind and water flow through the structure rather than exert load on the structure. It's not woven to take on water

I see far fewer problems here than I do with a ship and await something (technically) specific to support your ongoing sense of incredulity.

Anything to avoid dealing with the leaky-planking brigade.

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In your hypothesis, sure. The thing is: IT'S NEVER BEEN DONE. SO you are purely speculating.

I, on the other hand, am going off of how every ship found in the history of finding shit (archeology)has been built, none of which are woven, all of which are built in the "typical" fashion

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Ship? Whose talking about a ship? A ships job is to go places; to be steered there and to propel itself or be propelled there. It typically has to keep an eye on construction costs too.

This is a liferaft designed for a unique purpose. Money is no object. Of course you're not going to see it's design commonly used.

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So, sure, your ship "works" in your hypothesis because it's not been tested.

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What's to test? Rafts float on water (once made from lighter-than-water materials) and that's all this vessel is.

The unanswerable question is whether this vessel had to manage storms and significant waves. If not then I don't see what the problem is. And it doesn't appear to me that you do either.

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RAZD writes: The material a boat is constructed from has absolutely no effect on whether the boat will float or not.

Hi RAZD. I hope all is well.

When the vessel isn't based around an air containing hull then it matters alot.

The key term is displacement: a boat will ride at the elevation where the weight of the water displaced by the boat is equal to the weight of the boat and contents.

Of course. And in our balsa wood model the relatively low weight of the wood involved permits higher other-load carrying capacity.

If you treat the ark as a leaky raft, with the only displacement coming from the wood timbers and not from the shape of the hull, then you have significantly less displacement.

Agreed.

An earlier post contains a calculation based on the ark being 50% submerged - with the submerged volume made up of woven balsa (70% wood/30% space iirc). The water displaced gave an above waterline load carrying capacity of 3000 metric tonnes or so.

You have less load carrying capacity than a sealed hull construction - for sure. But you also have a vessel that is immune to the problem of leaks - swells passing right through it.. so to speak.

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DA writes: Have you ever worked with balsa wood? It is so porous, light and soft that you can snap small pieces of it in half with one finger. You are expecting us to believe that animals with weights as large as 13,000 lbs (the average weight of an African elephant bull (male) would not tear this balsa wood construction apart? Much less the hooves, feet and other appendages of thousands of other animals.

Balsa below the waterline provides optimal buoyancy. Other wood can be used in construction to provide good wear/localised strength characteristics - think of GRP coated polystrene surfboards. Not that balsa wood should be considered weak, think: De Havilland Mosquito.

However, given that some folk object to the use of balsa on locational availability* grounds we could always switch to cedar, Lebanese cedar solving the locality problem perhaps. It's not as light as balsa so we'd have to reduce our above-waterline load carrying capacity to something like 1,500 metric tonnes (or 1,490 metric tonnes if we subtract the aforementioned pair of African elephants).

You are out of your gourd? How much more backpeddling and outright fabricated lies are you going to use to support this myth?

Backpeddling? What backpeddling?

*it could be that the YEC argument permits an alternative model for continental location at the time but seeing as I'm not aware of what that model is we'll suppose balsa wood out.

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it must be magic water to pass only through the holes of his farcical aquatic construction and not exert any force on the remainder of the vessel.

It's not 'any' force. It's mucho reduced force - compared to what a traditional closed hull structure would undergo. If it's a good enough idea for fishermans nets then it's good enough for Noahs ark.

How much reduced? show your math.

There's no math in the OP. Nor here. The OP approaches things from a credulity point of view and is correct (in my view) in supposing it impossible to create a watertight hull (placed on even a calm sea) by traditional shipbuilding means. He uses the example of a similar sized wooden hull to illustrate his point and works from there. Remember:

the OP writes: And yet, creationists want me to believe that a 450 ft. (minimum) vessel of ALL wood construction was able to withstand a storm of 40 days and then remain at sea for almost a year, manned by only eight people, without the efficient pumps of the turn of the century, caulked with nothing more than "pitch inside and out". Not to mention the overwhelming necessity of the limited crew to feed and water thousands of animals and to muck out thousands of pens (and then carry the result of the mucking up two decks in order to throw it overboard).

I'm suggesting more floating platform/less ship. It doesn't stretch credulity to suppose that an intrinsically buoyant structure would be capable of floating on water whilst carrying a load. There is no need for pumps, no need for caulking, no need to dispose of waste and no need to feed (assuming feed was put in place beforehand and the animals fed themselves).

We've no way of knowing what the sea conditions were in the locality of the ark and we shouldn't necessarily suppose 'stormy'. To that end, we can suppose the possibility of a calm-ish sea which isn't (credulity suggests) going to tax a structure through which a swell can freely move. If it floats your boat, imagine a series of smaller rafts daisy chained together rather than a single monolithic structure. Something that could be expected to roll with the waves. Then come back with your objections.

Are you trying to win the Buzsaw award for most blatant bullshit?

Be careful that your objections rise above rhetoric lest you fall on your own sword in this regard.

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