Can islands float on water

The outside layer, the one we all live on, is called The Crust and it wraps around our world like the frosting wraps around the cake pop. Lava is pushing up on the crust and forming a volcano! How cool is that? Lava flows through the mantle of the Earth and pushes up on the crust. The lava pushes so hard, the ground moves up and forms volcanos! The top part of an island is actually a mountain or volcano that is attached to the ocean floor. When they push their way up from the deep parts of the ocean, the very top part of the volcano becomes an island.

Though everything that is in the water has a bouyant force which results from the weight of the water it displaces, islands are not free and do not float. Coral island s are low islands formed in warm waters by tiny sea animals called corals. Corals build up hard external skeletons of calcium carbonate. This material, also known as limestone , is similar to the shells of sea creatures like clams and mussels. Do islands float?

Island do not float on anything. Land really does go all the way down. Nooks and crannies. Semantic enigmas. The body beautiful. Red tape, white lies. Speculative science. This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. Could I swim underneath an island? What creatures could live in the gap between the bottom of the island and the sea-bed?

The answer is no. In other word, no, you can't swim under them. Max Wurr, Stanmore United Kingdom Its not uncommon to think of a samll island as some floating mass on the sea, but if you apply some common sense it wouldn't stay in one place as tides and weather systems would mean it wouldn't stay in one place! Like all land, an island is simply the top of a mountain or cliff rising from the sea bed that is sufficiently high to remain above sea level.

David Cockling, Newport, Isle of Wight UK If the land beneath an island didn't 'go all the way down', what do you imagine would give it the buoyancy to leave it exposed above water, or the stability to stop it from moving about? You can sometimes swim under overhanging coral growths but the island must still be anchored to the earth. Creatures eg fish lobsters etc could live in crannies in the substructure. The only island, if indeed it is an island, that floats on water is the ice that forms the North Pole.

All islands that are made of earth, rock etc are part of the Earth's crust, as is the sea bed, which, if it were not for the oceans, would be seen to continuously envelop our globe, albeit in a fractured manner.

An island is mostly rock, so if it didn't go all the way down it would sink!