chongo@nsc.UUCP (Landon C. Noll) (12/14/84)
In article <230@decwrl.UUCP> merrill@5140.DEC writes: >It went byebye, over the hill, you won't miss it! It's the WATER PRESSURE >that holds the ship up. That's why BIG ships have THICK hulls. You can have a very crushable ship which weighs very much and also floats. The only things which matters is how Deep the ship sinks in water. Let us say that a Grandma's overcooked chocolate chip cookies can withstand 1.1 kg/cm^2 without breaking. Then we can make a battleship like this: |<------------100 m-------------->| | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Grandma cookie battleship ^ |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Water | | | | Her ship's deck is square 10 m | Water \\\ | because thats was the shape | | |\/------\ | of her pan | |<-- 1 cookie width <poot>-| o < <-fish | v | |/\------' \=================================/ (assume this polluted Water (i.e., its floating) water weighs 1g/cm^3) Note that the volume of the displaced 'virtual' is 100*100*10 m^3. Since water weighs 1 metric ton per m^3, then her ship weighs 100,000 metric tons. Now what is the max. pressure on the cookies? Well pressure of water increases with the depth at a rate of 1 g/cm^2 per cm of depth. Therefore the pressure at the bottom is max, and is 1kg/cm^2. This is just under the 1.1kg/cm^2 break limit. The crushable ship with THIN walls could float. Begin :=) Mechanical Eng. will object as to the sea-worthiness of Grandma's battle ship. We must assume that the chips dont get soggy. (her cookies are always rock hard) We also must assume that the crew are prohibited from picking at the chocolate chips in the ship walls. He also must assume that the farting tuna fish (see the above picture) does not like chocolate. However since this last assumption is not bloody likely, the Navy would never want to buy her ship. chongo <end (=:> /\??/\ -- "Don't blame me, I voted for Mondale!" John Alton 85'