Why do ships have cicular windows,why not square ones?
In: Physics
To build upon the existing, good answers in this thread, we originally built some jet planes with square windows. [The last surviving example](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-50585312) of a square windowed De Havilland Comet is now in a museum.
The square windows cause more pressure around the corners than on the flats and ultimately caused planes to crash. When these jet airliners were rolled out in the 50’s, we didn’t know better.
Nowadays, planes have rounded windows without corners to prevent these higher stress areas from causing issues. Boats have been aware of this issue for a long time and have had round windows for longer.
You’ll notice that windows thst undergo different stress profiles on boats and planes sometimes do have “squarer” corners – e.g. [Bridges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_(nautical)) on a ship or [the cockpit of a plane](https://en.m
wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockpit). In many cases, we still curve the corners, but in others we simply try to plan for and manage the increased stress this causes.
Particularly in taller boat Bridges – they aren’t going to be subject to harsh waves battering against them, or need to be watertight to several atmospheres of pressure like the windows lower down. The lower levels of stress on the window means it might be easier and cheaper to use a square corner.
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