This exhibit explores the sub-marine’s buoyancy system. It has a
watertight pool with a scaled model submarine. In the submarine there are two ballast tanks connected to air pumps that can be controlled.

How does a submarine work? A submarine is capable of ascending and descending in the water thanks to the ship’s buoyancy system. A submarine’s buoy-ancy depends on the ships ballast tanks. If a submarine’s tanks are mainly full of air it has a positive buoyancy, meaning that it is less dense than the water around it-and will therefore float. For a submarine to submerge it must have negative buoyancy, which means that its ballast tanks are filled with a certain amount of water, making the submarine more dense than the water around it.