The first reason as to why the Titanic sank was because it collided with an iceberg. If the iceberg was not there, the Titanic would not have sank. However, the weather conditions contributed to the iceberg being in the path of the Titanic. A more intense Gulf Stream was created because the climate in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico was unusually hot. This caused a more than average amount of icebergs along the intersection of the Labrador Current and the Gulf Stream. This intersection happened to be in the path of the Titanic and therefore, there was a much higher chance of the Titanic hitting an iceberg. [1]
A second reason as to why the Titanic sank is because of the material used for the structure of the vessel. The steel used to build the hull of the ship had “insufficient fracture toughness” [3]. Fracture toughness is when a material has a crack and is able to resist being fractured [2]. As the Titanic’s fracture toughness was insufficient, it was more prone to becoming brittle in cold temperatures [3]. Therefore, when the ship struck the iceberg, the brittle steel hull was easily shattered which allowed water to enter the ship [3]. Also, when the ship hit the iceberg, six of the watertight compartments were breached as seen in Figure 1[5]. As a result, Titanic was no longer able to stay afloat because it was designed to stay afloat with only four compartments being flooded.…show more content… This is considerably fast for a huge ship. The ship weighed 52,310 tons [6]. Momentum is given by the following