I’m only going to be a pedant because that’s sort of the point of these conversations, that’s not a bad interpretation and I appreciate you posting it.

BUT, it’s not so much that it’s “distributed” as that, so long as the boat floats, there will be a mass of water displaced exactly equal to the mass of the boat. In this case it’s displaced off the bridge (off either end). There is zero force being applied up or downstream (except during the initial transition). That’s the fun thing about incomprehensible fluids, every infinitely small point at the bottom of a water colum ONLY has the force of the column above it acting on it. A pressure gage will read the same for a square mm or square m.

Spot on with the bowl though. The displaced water can’t leave the system in that case so the masses add.

Heres the action lab video BTW! m.youtube.com/watch?v=SUq_tM3yGTM&pp=ygUKQWN0aW9u…