The Physics of Titanic's Final Plunge!

I feel like I'm cheating on Mike Brady by watching this video.

I have seen the ocean on a completely moonless starry night, and it's unimaginably dark. I can't even begin to fathom the horror the passengers faced during the sinking.

The scale of the violence of the Titanic's demise never fails to leave me incredulous.

You’ve included sinking animations from Honor and Glory, National Geographic, and the James Cameron movie in one video. That’s impressive, Sam.

I was on a US Navy FFG out of Charleston with Mine sweeper support. Our home was the North Atlantic. I have witnessed its fury and its calms like glass. We stopped at the location given by Titanic to Carpathia in April 1975. On a beautiful, clear, cold day, the ship's Pastor gave a service, and we offered our prayers. There were no Gulls, just the vast, clear ocean and silence. I still get this horrible empty feeling from that day, thinking about all those people.

Thank you for that fine forensic analysis, Mr Pence. Of course, the experience of it was... somewhat different.

2 videos in one day sam!

So my hypothesis was kinda right, it was the weight of the engines that pulled the stern down NOT the bow itself. However on a side note since most of the damage was concentrated around the forward section of the engine room, the bulkhead behind it could have been practically intact. This would explain why the Stern stayed in that slight inclined position for about a minute or two, in other words: after the breakup the engines pulled the forward section under the water so hard that the water went over that bulkhead and started to flood that compartment. Once that area flooded, the Stern went more vertical and then the next compartment got compromised due to the angle of inclination, this gave the Stern a controlled momentum on its sinking powered by the dead weight of the engines and the step by step flooding of the compartments. Like I said in the previous part of this video, it was impossible for the bow to pull down the stern after the breakup since that would require the double bottom to sustain twice to thrice the forces for which it was intended for. Plus the bow wouldn't slowly sink underwater on its own, it already lost its buoyancy and had double its weight because of that, it would have plunged full speed as soon as it disconnected itself from most of the main body that held it near the surface. A chunk of double bottom could never deal with that on its own.

The stern did not go nearly as vertical as some of the animations show. James Cameron discussed this when he ‘discovered’ that the stern could either have gone under vertically, or splashed back down when the ship broke in 2, but not both.

Titanic's double bottom during the break up be like: I need to make my creators proud! AH-.... well that didn't go to plan.

Thanks for confirming that the heavy steel engines don’t float!

in my sleep-deprived, inattentive state I swear I thought you said "so how do we know the Titanic sank?" and I thought...because it's at the bottom of the ocean 😭 definitely not what you said lol. thanks for the video Sam!

Wow!! Sweet!!! Thanks for your presentation of the sinking of the Lusitania today!! That was amazing video!! Science and history all in one day!!

Nice to see more content Sam! I've been missing your videos.

Good to see you, Sam! And two videos, what a treat. Interesting as always 😎

Very pleased that you took Wolfric's suggestions and added it into your remastered video! Improved the content by a whole lot.

It's nice learning new things about Titanic. Thanks for teaching us new things Sam.

I suspect that a quick diagram explaining "center of buoyancy" and "center of mass" might have clarified your description. I appears to me that after the bow and stern sections separated, the center of buoyancy of the stern moved well aft of the center of mass (because the reciprocating engines aggregated so much mass towards the very bow of the stern section). The center of mass pulled down, the center of buoyancy pushed up, and the resulting torque rotated the stern section so that the center of mass was directly beneath the center of buoyancy. The incoming water then caused the stern section to sink as described in the video. I appreciate the effort and time invested in this interesting video.

Your videos always bright my day!

Another intriguing video topic. Great work!