Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Did you have a point?So how does it stay afloat? How does it resist being blown over in a gale, or toppled by rough seas? What stops it from capsizing if the ship is forced to make a sharp turn?
Let's remember that it is also burdened with the weight of 3,500 passengers and all their luggage. Not to mention the food required to keep them sated, the thousands of tables and chairs in restaurants, bars and theatres, beds, bathrooms, the swimming pools, the marble-clad atrium, the lifts, and everything else required to service a floating hotel.
But, despite all of those things and more, the vessel is full of air. Imagine a bowling ball and a beach ball side by side. Drop them in the sea and the beach ball will float, high in the water.
Let’s dispel another myth before starting to look at the physics.
Although the size of a ship is calculated on its tonnage, this is a measure of volume rather than weight. It is defined by the ship’s enclosed internal space.
A ship’s weight is measured by the amount of water it displaces. Royal Princess, for example, is 142,714 gross tonnes, and while sister ship Majestic Princess is almost the same size it measures 143,000 gross tons for the simple reason that there is a glass roof covering one of its swimming pools.
............
Now, the physics. A cruise ship displaces an amount of water equivalent to its own mass. The pressure of the sea pushes up against the vessel’s hull to counter the downward force of the ship’s mass. Unlike air, water cannot be compressed, so the combined forces create buoyancy.
It’s basically the principle discovered when Archimedes took a bath 2,300 years ago and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse in celebration.
The water a cruise ship displaces becomes the waves and wash it creates as it moves along. A rounded U-shaped hull is preferable for creating buoyancy; some ships are flat-bottomed and while they still float, they are likely to move uncomfortably in heavy seas.
[This should clear up a few misguided ideas hopefully.]
Any more objections? Try this.
What the video says are not mine.
You do not seem to understand that no one has said that an under-laden boat would float. We are talking about why it would fail once it was floating.
Please note that a cruise ship.is made out of steel using the latest engineering technology. You are trying to claim that a wooden boat, without any means of stabilization, could survive the worst storms our planet has ever seen.