The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was not only the result of an iceberg collision, but was also closely related to buoyancy and hull structure. The collision caused water to enter the ship, reducing buoyancy, and the ship eventually sank under the force of gravity.
What do you think of when you hear the word Titanic? Many people will think of the tragic love between the two main characters. However, in the shipbuilding industry, Titanic is remembered as the worst maritime disaster in which a passenger ship collided with an iceberg, causing many casualties. This became such a hot topic that safety regulations for passenger ships were further tightened. So how could a ship that was so stable and floated so well on water sink after a simple collision with a glacier? This question can be answered by understanding the principle of how a ship floats on water. First, let’s explain why a ship floats on water before we explain why the Titanic sank.
What does it mean for an object to float on water? It means that the sum of the forces acting on the object is zero, which means that the forces are in equilibrium. The Naver Encyclopedia defines the state of equilibrium as “the state in which a force acts on an object and the object remains stationary. Here, you can imagine that there is another force that counterbalances the weight of the ship made of heavy iron plates. In physics, this is called buoyancy. An object immersed in a fluid, such as water or air, receives a force from the fluid in the opposite direction to gravity, which is called buoyancy. In other words, a ship can float on water because the force of gravity, which is the weight of the ship itself, and the buoyancy created by the ship floating on water are in balance.
Then why does a ship made of iron plates sink with the same weight, while iron plates float? The concept needed here is the magnitude of buoyancy. To understand the magnitude of buoyancy, we can think of the famous anecdote of Archimedes in the bath. Archimedes realized that the weight of the water that was pushed out when he entered the bath was the magnitude of buoyancy. This is how they were able to determine that the crown was made of real gold. In this story, the weight of water used to describe the magnitude of buoyancy is the product of volume and density. The volume here refers to the amount of an object, such as an iron plate or a ship, submerged in a fluid, and the density refers to the degree of density of the fluid pushed out by the iron plate or ship. This shows that the magnitude of buoyancy is proportional to volume and density. In the case of a simple iron plate, the iron plate itself weighs the same as the water, but because it has a small volume, it sinks. In the case of a ship, it weighs the same as a simple iron plate and has the same density as water, but because it has a large volume, the force of gravity and the force of buoyancy are in equilibrium, allowing it to float on the water. In other words, because the volume of a ship submerged in water is large, its buoyancy is relatively greater than that of a simple iron plate, allowing it to float.
We have seen the principle of how a ship can float on water through the previous process. Now let’s explain why the Titanic, which floated well, sank after colliding with a glacier. We explained earlier that the amount of buoyancy is proportional to the volume submerged in water. More specifically, the volume submerged at this point is the submerged closed volume. Here the term “closed” refers to a state in which there are no holes or gaps in the surface in contact with the water, so that water cannot enter the interior of the object. In other words, for a ship to float, water must not be able to enter the interior of the ship. The Titanic hit a glacier, which punctured a hole in the left side of the ship’s bow, and water began to enter the hole, causing the ship to lose some of its enclosed volume. This reduced the ship’s buoyancy, and when the buoyancy became less than the force of gravity, the ship lost its balance and began to sink.
We learned about buoyancy from the sinking of the Titanic. To summarize what was said earlier, buoyancy is the force that balances gravity and the force acting on the ship, allowing the ship to float on the water. Its magnitude is equal to the weight of the water, and the weight of the water is proportional to the volume of the water and the density of the water. At this point, the volume of water in which an object is submerged is a closed space with no holes for water to enter. The sinking of the Titanic had a huge impact on the shipbuilding industry, and the world is working to reduce the amount of submerged volume that ships lose when they collide with icebergs by creating a regulation called SOLAS. This is also an effort by countries around the world to prevent the sinking of the Titanic from happening again.
The Titanic tragedy is remembered as an event that goes beyond a simple love story and reminds us of the importance of scientific principles and technology. It teaches us that we must understand the scientific concepts related to buoyancy of objects and strive to make maritime transportation safer.
