I follow battleship New Jersey on YouTube. One of the recent topics is how the hull around the propellers can corrode more than other areas of the hull. Because of this, the navy installed sacrificial anodes.
Why would a large ship corrode around the propellers more. How to anodes prevent this?
In: Chemistry
Top comment is great, but not really in the spirit of ELI5..
Salt water likes to eat metal, and it likes to eat some metals more than others. If you give the salt water the choice to eat steel (what really big boats are made out of) and zinc (a nice shiny metal), the salt water will almost always choose to eat the zinc. The people who fix the boat can then go and replace the zinc (anode) much easier than they can replace the main parts of the boat.
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