How did a piece of ice cut through the solid steel hull of the Titanic?
In: Physics
So, the Titanic was REALLY big, and VERY heavy. The iceberg was even BIGGER and WAY heavier. When the ship collided with the iceberg, you can imagine the steel hull on the bow of the ship wanting to stop moving forward, but the rest of the ship wants to keep moving. The steel at the very front of the ship is now being crushed between a massive, practically immoveable iceberg and the rest of the Titanic. The steel wasn’t cut as much as it was bent and smashed. The rivets holding the ship together probably started popping out of place like bullets.
The steel it was made from had too much sulfur in it. Sulfur moves to specific places in steel and makes it far more brittle than it would otherwise be. Combine that with the low temperatures, and it was like throwing a chunk of ice through a window.
It’s size and force.
Ice may seem weak, cause you’re used to seeing it from the fridge as ice cubes. But the bigger they are, the more power it has.
Imagine the movie Ted. You have a 2ft teddy bear that came to life. If you get in a fight, you’d easily win. Even if you were a 5 year old kid, you’d easily win. Now change that teddy bear to a 200ft sized teddy bear; you die in a heartbeat.
It’s the same reason why a 5’6″ man can workout as much as he wants, have super lean body fat full of muscles; and if they get in a fight with a 6’8″ heavy load person who’s never worked out, the bigger person would have a higher probability of winning.
Wasn’t solid steel hull, not by far. Steel plates riveted together, and as the top comment (atm) says, the force needed to move the iceberg was (or would have been) greater than what it took to break the rivets.
The same reason your soft finger can push through a thin sheet of aluminum foil, it pushes hard enough on a small enough point of the boat to tear the sheet metal.
It happened more like a car wreck. It didn’t necessarily cut it so much as it did mush it all out of place. Think of how a car crumples and deforms when hitting an object like another car, now imagine if it was supposed to be water-tight.
The same way a wooden tree cuts through the steel of a vehicle when a car runs into it. Bang Ding Ow.
Try to break through a piece of aluminum foil with an ice cube. Iceberg big, doesn’t move much. Metal thin, pushing hard against a big thing that won’t move, and it probably had some pointy parts that concentrated the pressure.
In those days, the making of steel plate wasn’t what it is today. When the iceberg hit it shattered the plate instead of deforming it and tore a 300 foot gash into the side. The best laid plans of mice and men scenario.
I have seen steel snap under it’s own weight. I worked at a steel fabrication plant. We were making roof trusses. We cut 14 x 120 beams in half to make tee’s 90 feet long. We sat them up on saw horses to get the camber we needed for the trusses. In the course of one night they all broke just sitting their under their own weight.
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