Why did the RMS Titanic sink so quickly ? It ’ s one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century , and you , AQUILAnaut , are on the case !
The world ’ s largest passenger vessel was designed to stay afloat for two to three days if disaster struck , but it actually sank in less than three HOURS . What went wrong ? Did the shipbuilders use faulty materials ? Or were the icy waters just too much to handle ?
This cold case crime scene lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for 79 years , until , in 1991 , a piece of the Titanic ’ s hull was brought to the surface . Now , thanks to metallurgists ( scientists who study the behaviour of metals ), we ’ re able to decipher the lifetime of this salty steel from manufacture to fracture .
Surely a bit of salty steel from the ocean can ’ t tell you very much , right ? Ed
Weirdly , it can ! Forensic metallurgists have given us all the info we need to decipher the life of the steel in Titanic ’ s hull . Take a look at the evidence and decide for yourself what went wrong .
EVIDENCE FILE 1 :
Sweat the Small Stuff
First we start small , really small , with the elements in the steel ’ s recipe . Steel is mostly iron and carbon atoms , but it ’ s common for other atoms to sneak in . Some , like silicon and manganese , help strengthen the steel . Others disrupt the steel and make it weaker , like sulfur , phosphorous and oxygen – metallurgists call these tramp elements . Steelmakers in the 1900s did not have the technology to control steel recipes as precisely as we do now . Different batches of steel often had varying amounts of each element . Take a look at Evidence # 01 – what do you notice ?
EVIDENCE ID : 4QU1L4- # 01 PERCENTAGE OF ADDED ATOMS IN EACH STEEL SAMPLE
Sample Titanic Hull Modern Steel Manganese 0.47 0.51 Phosphorous 0.045 0.013 Sulfur 0.069 0.013 Silicon 0.025 0.280 Oxygen 0.013 0.002
The sample with the most strengthening elements is :
FUN FACT TRUMPET More than three million rivets were used to hold Titanic together . Forty have been salvaged from the wreck , and most were found to be very poor quality . Metallurgists think that the bad rivets made the damage even worse .
_____________________________________________ The sample with the most weakening tramp elements is :
_____________________________________________
14