The Physics of the Titanic

The Sinking of the Titanic

    On May 31st, 1911, 2224 people boarded the infamous RMS Titanic -- a British passenger liner on a course towards New York City from Southampton. The RMS Titanic was the pinnacle of luxury, as the largest sailing ship of her time she contained multiple high class restaurants, pools, and lodging options. Tragedy stuck the ship on April 14 at 11:40 pm when she struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland, causing the ship to flood and eventually break apart and sink to the bottom of the ocean with majority of her passengers still aboard. Of the estimated 2224 initial passengers, more than 1500 of them died that night. So how did the destruction of the world's most advanced and luxurious passenger liner come about? 

    To understand what caused the Titanic to sink, one must understand what caused her to float in the first place. Archimedes' Principle -- which describes the physical law of buoyancy -- states that  the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially, is proportional to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces. Thus in order to float, a ship needs to be able to displace a volume of water equal to its own weight -- to float, a 10,000 ton ship needs to be able wide/long/deep enough to displace 10,000 tons of water. Thus in order to be safely buoyant, a ship must weigh less than the maximum volume of the water it can displace. 

Archimedes' Principle 

	=	buoyant force
	=	fluid density
	=	acceleration due to gravity
	=	fluid volume

=

buoyant force

=

fluid density

=

acceleration due to gravity

=

fluid volume

    One of the key safety mechanisms of the Titanic was in her 16 water tight compartments that were designed to allow the ship to withstand a possible collision -- even taking into account the possibility of taking in water and changing the balance between the buoyancy of the ship and the water. In the event of a collision, the Titanic could maintain buoyancy if less than four of the compartments were breeched or took on water. On April 14th, six of the sixteen water tight compartments were destroyed. This caused the ship to take on enough water to make the density of the ship greater than that of the water, which caused it to eventually sink.