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Weak Rivets May Have Sped Sinking of Titanic
Pickens writes "Metallurgists studying the hulk of the Titanic argue that the liner went down fast after hitting an iceberg because the ship's builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. They say that better rivets would have probably kept the Titanic afloat long enough for rescuers to have arrived, saving hundreds of lives. The team collected clues from 48 Titanic rivets and found many riddled with high concentrations of slag, a glassy residue of smelting that can make iron brittle. To test whether this extra slag weakened the rivets, scientists commissioned a blacksmith to make rivets to the same specifications as those used to join steel plates in the hull of the Titanic. When the plates were bent in the laboratory, the rivet heads popped off at loads of about 4,000 kg. With the right slag content they should have held up to about 9,000 kg. Even a few failures because of flawed metal would have been sufficient to unzip entire seams, because as faulty rivets popped, more stress would have been placed on the good ones, causing them to break in turn. The shipbuilder, which is still in existence, denies it all."
You mean it was the terrorists?
Running time: 194 min.
If only it had gone down faster.
...riveting.
I remember in a Discovery Channel special about the Titanic they mentioned that the plates were torn apart at the seams rather than gashed through by the ice. The amount of force with which the ship hit the ice was low enough that it should not have ruptured.
So many years later, I wonder if it is worth it to hold the shipmaker accountable for the tragic loss of life. The stowaways in the galley climbing the railing at the bow shouting their claims to the throne of the earth were all taken under, and though they found love in the last hours of the Titanic, I can't help but wonder what sort of lives such rapscallions would have lived had they landed in New York City. Instead, at the bottom of the sea is the blue gem, shining brightly in the ghostly beams of the research submarines, so far away from the hands which let it fall to the seafloor in remembrance of the short, brilliant, flash of love in those few hours whose imprint upon Rose lasted her whole life.
Those damn terrorists attacked the titanic by planting an ice burg in the middle of the ocean. Solution? Attack Iran.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Now...if we can start second-guessing some more disasters, we can really get the lawsuits going.
THL phish sticks
Except in the version I saw the Titanic looked like a giant hot dog running aground in a sea of ketchup. Also, LSD was involved.
Aye. That iceberg thing didn't have much to do with it after all, eh?
which is totally what she said
we'll never let go! Not until it freezes to death, at any rate..
which is totally what she said
Well, with global warming, we solved the iceberg problem anyway.
If not for the weak rivets, we wouldn't have gotten to see Leonardo DiCaprio drown.
Why is the ship-builder hesitating to claim such progress?
maybe just the tip.
I often wonder why any car makers are still in business considering how many of their products fail spectacularly when driven into trees, stone walls, large pieces of concrete, and other vehicles.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
The hypocrisy of it all. First they blame an iceberg for sinking a ship and then turn around and say Global Warming is a bad thing. Rest assured if we nip this 'natural occuring ice' thing in the bud our ships will be safe once and for all!
My understanding is that there were only a few sets of rivets on one end and a zipper holding each of the sheets. At the time the shipbuilders, the L. Evi & Strauss Company, thought this was the better design, although differing "rivet-fly" prototypes were developed. I guess building seaworthy wessels was never in their genes.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.